Something Wicked
by sienna27
Summary: Universe V: Offshoot of the main Girl story. The team gets lost in a snowstorm and stumbles into hell.
1. The Storm

_***NEW NOTE – OLD STORY***_

Hi everyone! For some of you, if you're still here in CM, long time no speak! If you used to follow me here in the H/P fandom, I'm sorry I went away, but it wasn't by choice. It just was the way it was. And any of you who did know me from before, I can tell you that you all know this story here already. Universe V! It ended up being left incomplete about four years back when my CM muses flew the coop for what I thought, was a permanent basis. But, for reasons I explained in much more detail over on my Tumblr (sienna27 is my blog if you're interested), shockingly, due to an unexpected series of events outlined there, my Girl muses have returned! So I am taking a shot at ATTEMPTING to finish up this story. If I can get it done (as in the muse really sticks around) that would be amazing, and if I think I can keep the momentum going (and find another Girl universe which feels inviting) I will then take a crack at reposting/finalizing another of the Girl universes that were left undone. But please, do keep your expectations low on that latter point. I am "hopeful" about being able to wrap this one up, but absolutely, one thing at a time. And please know, new readers, that I stopped watching the show YEARS ago! Like three U.S. presidents ago. So, the version of the team that you will find in my stories, are the original version from way, way back when Prentiss first showed up at the BAU. And my Girl universes became their own self-sustaining little ecosystems that really had nothing to do with canon after probably season four. So, yeah, if you're a current canon viewer, and would like to read this story, please wipe the last decade of events from your brains :)

But to the repost, I did a bit of spot cleaning on these chapters just catching missing punctuation or whatnot from the first time around, but otherwise, I thought they seemed fine so these early chapters are going up pretty much as they were originally. And I am going to leave most of my original A/Ns on them too, because well, they're all still relevant for the plot points, so why delete them? Right? Right :) And I am genuinely happy to be back here again and I hope that maybe some of you from before are still out there and might be happy to see ME again. I missed you guys :) So yeah, here we go… again!

 **Author's Note (Original Posting):**

This is Universe V. And yes, we are skipping ahead a few letters there, and not as teased to the Z is for Zombie, but instead to V as in VAMPIRE! Yes, we're doing a vampire story! And it is a crossover with a book, and no it is NOT Twilight :) This is a throwback to literally the very first bonus that Kavi and I wrote for our prompts community, a crossover with Stephen King's, Salem's Lot. So obviously WAY darker undead world. There are no sparkles here :) If you don't know the story (though it's highly recommended reading) essentially vampires take over a small, secluded, town in Maine.

If you choose to jump into this one, you need to know that it's again a Girl spinoff because that is my base, and you should **read Chapters 1 to 36 of Falling in Love With a Girl** before you start this one. Also being familiar with the holiday stories **Making Spirits Bright** and **A Kick, A Kiss and Bag of Chips** , would be helpful because those also lay down the foundation for the Hotch/Prentiss relationship found herein.

For the Girl'verse "connoisseurs" this would be in January just after events in the bathroom. For general recap, Hotch is long separated, but still a month from signing the divorce papers. And JJ has just found out she's pregnant, but nobody else knows that yet. In Girl, her pregnancy isn't generally known until May, and again, this is January.

And FYI, I make no promises here for the health, safety or welfare, for any members of the team. It's an M for language and violence. Shit's gonna get messy!

* * *

 **Bonus Challenge #1 - Vampires**

Author: Stephen King

Title Challenge: Salem's Lot

* * *

 **The Storm**

"Hotch, are you sure you know where we _are_ , man?"

Morgan's sharp tone cut through the tense silence that had been filling the SUV for the last half hour. And the response to that bizarre question from the back seat . . . where Emily, JJ, and Reid were crammed together, huddling for warmth . . . was a confused furrowing of brows, and shaking of heads. Then Emily shot Derek a scowl that he couldn't see.

What the hell was he talking about?! Of course Hotch didn't KNOW where they were. NOBODY knew where they were! That was the whole FUCKING problem!

They were lost!

And Emily could see, from her vantage point behind the passenger's seat, that though he was attempting to maneuver around a blowing snow drift that was blocking half the roadway, still, Hotch took a split second to shoot Derek a nasty look across the front seat.

Though it was dark outside, his face was clearly visible in the dashboard lights.

"No, _Derek_ ," Hotch bit out tightly as his eyes snapped back to the blinding white snow splattering over the front windshield, "I do NOT know where we are. Do _you_?! Because if you do, NOW, or perhaps forty-five FUCKING minutes ago, would have been the time to share that INFORMATION!"

Hotch's last words were a straight up growl, punctuated by a smack to the steering wheel. Both actions combined, caused Derek's mouth to snap shut, and for Emily and JJ to exchange a quick, worried, look.

Because okay, that was bad!

Yes, under the circumstances, Derek's question was obnoxious, but still, Hotch almost never lost his temper! So it really wasn't good news for ANYONE stuck in that vehicle, if he was losing it right now. Because right now . . . Emily's anxious gaze shifted back out her side window . . . they were already SERIOUSLY screwed!

The day had started out pretty normally though.

At the morning briefing, JJ said they'd been asked to assist with a series of missing children cases happening around East Millinocket, Maine. The two most recent were just last week, but apparently the disappearances had been happening off and on for some years. Until now though, the investigations had always just been handled internally. Which was a bit odd given the scope of missing person's reports in the file they were sent . . . almost forty . . . but the team was chalking that one up to old fashioned Yankee pride. After all, they were talking about the backwoods of Maine. Which, regardless of the year on the calendar, still wasn't a part of the country likely to ask for help from outsiders.

Yankees took care of themselves.

So what had changed this week? Well, now they had a new sheriff. One who had just moved to the area after retiring from twenty-five years working homicide on the Boston P.D. And when those two little boys hadn't arrived home from school last week, after immediately raising a region-wide Amber alert (which the previous sheriffs had never done), the new sheriff started flipping through the old case files. That's when he'd realized that those two boys were just the latest in a long line of young children who'd disappeared over the last twenty years.

More than thirty of them were just in the last ten.

Immediately seeing the horrifying pattern that he couldn't understand how his predecessors had missed, he'd called down to his old homicide buddies on the BPD. One of them had referred him to the BAU. So last night JJ had received an email from Sheriff Dixon asking if their team wouldn't mind coming up to take a look around, because he was pretty sure that he had a serial killer working in the area. And after reviewing the paperwork he'd forwarded to them that morning, the team was pretty sure he did too.

So they had all, minus Dave (who was attending a funeral in New York) grabbed their bags and headed out to the jet. They'd landed in Bangor a little after four with snow in the forecast, but none falling at that point. And because it was just the five of them for now . . . Dave would be joining them tomorrow . . . Hotch had decided to take just take the one Suburban rather than the usual two.

Dave would pick up the other one when he arrived.

So they'd set out for East Millinocket in bitterly cold, but essentially clear, weather. It was supposed to be about a two hour drive, a straight shot going north. The flurries started after the first half hour. And then there was a detour on the road. A downed tree.

That was where things had started to go wrong.

Though there had been a state highway man there to give alternate directions, their team seemed to be the only people who had taken the road suggested. The road that was supposed to take them northwest for approximately forty minutes, before they took a left hand turn onto Rural Route 14, for another thirty.

They were supposed to end up right in the center of East Millinocket.

But it wasn't ten minutes after they'd taken the turn to go west, that the storm had whipped up out of nowhere. It had become a complete whiteout within maybe twenty minutes, and then they'd totally lost their bearings. And that had happened to have been right at the point where they were supposed to make the turn back to the east. Hence their current situation.

Totally fucking lost.

Ordinarily of course, any one of them could have just whipped out a smart phone and gotten a GPS reading or called for help. But they'd lost both the GPS, and all cell service, about an hour ago.

That was when they hit the forest.

Yeah, that was the other thing. They weren't just lost in a snowstorm in one of the least populous counties, of the least populous states in the country, they were also lost in a God damn FOREST! Like Hansel and Freaking Gretel! That is if Hansel and Gretel were five well trained federal agents carrying enough fire power in their vehicle to take over a very small country.

Which, based on the stories Emily had read, they were not.

But either way, at the moment their weapons didn't matter. Again, nor did their phones. Because now that the sun had completely set, everything visible in the headlights, was completely white.

White road, white ground, white trees.

They hadn't seen another vehicle, or even so much as a sign post, or a side road, in over an hour. Again, just after they'd made the detour. And peering over Hotch's shoulder, Emily could see that for the sake of their dwindling gas rations, they REALLY needed to find some kind of shelter, very soon. Because with the wind buffering the SUV, she knew that it was probably a good ten below zero outside. So it was going to suck BIG TIME, if they ran out of gas out there.

They'd freeze to death before morning.

And she could now hear Derek making that point to Hotch as well. The ' _we need to find shelter before we run out of gas,_ ' one. And seeing Hotch's fists clench around the steering wheel, Emily decided to step in and handle Derek's idiocy herself.

It was the only useful thing she'd been able to do in an hour.

"Hey, Captain Obvious!" She yelled from the backseat. "Would you happen to have any useful suggestions that we could undertake right now? Or are you just feeling good busting Hotch's balls about crap he can't control?"

For a moment there was stunned silence in the cab, and then Emily heard Morgan suck in a breath, right before he whipped his head around.

"Excuse me, girl?!"

"Excuse nothing, Derek," she scowled, "you're being a dick. We all know what our problems are. If you don't have any solutions on how to resolve said problems, shut up!"

"Don't tell me to shut up!" He shot back. To which she poked her finger in his back.

"I'll tell you to shut up if I NEED to tell you to shut up! So, why don't you take your big, fat fu . . ."

Before Emily could get out the rest of it . . . though admittedly the rest of the sentence was going to be mostly expletives that you would not use in front of your mother . . . Hotch cut her off with a sharp, "PRENTISS!" which she knew meant that he had already guessed how the rest of her sentence was going to turn out.

And when her eyes snapped up to his in the rearview mirror, she saw him giving her a head shake, so she slumped back against the seat.

"That would have been a good one too," she mumbled. Then in the dash light, she saw Hotch's mouth quiver for the briefest of seconds, so hers did too. Because she knew then that at least she'd been able to lighten his mood a bit.

Good.

Because she knew that he was blaming himself for this mess that they were in. Even though the mess they were in wasn't his fault at all. The route had seemed clear, and the storm had blown in before anybody had even realized it was a storm and not just a squall. At that point it had been too late to turn back, or to get shelter.

They were already in the middle of nowhere.

And she could see him now taking a breath, and then slowly letting it out. And though she would have liked to have asked him how he was doing, and to reassure him that nobody blamed him for this cluster, but she would never engage in conversation like that in front of the others. The recent shift in their relationship, the one that now allowed personal conversations whereas in the past they would have been completely verboten, was just that.

Personal.

And even as she felt JJ and Reid squirming next to her, she could hear Hotch clearing his throat. It seemed he had decided it was time for a 'rah, rah, pull together,' speech. And it probably was. Because if Derek opened his mouth and said something stupid again, she was probably going to club him with the butt of her pistol.

And that was going to make a mess.

"I know everyone is a bit on edge," she heard Hotch state quietly, "myself included. But as Prentiss has already so succinctly pointed out, as only she can," seeing him shoot her a look in the mirror, her eyes crinkled slightly, "we are all _already_ aware of our issues at the moment, and I'm presuming that if any of you had any fresh ideas on how to resolve those issues, that you would have shared them by now. But," his gaze flickered briefly down to the gas gauge . . . Emily could see they had less than a half tank left, "by my estimation we only have maybe another hour or so left on this tank. And if we haven't found shelter by the time the tank runs dry, that is obviously going to be a serious problem."

"So JJ," Hotch tipped his head as he briefly met her eyes in the mirror, "you're in charge of finding us some extra layers. Fortunately we do have the ready bags with us, but I want you to look in the way back. Get the vests, any blankets, hell, even the evidence bags," he looked back to the road, "people could line their boots with them to help keep their feet dry. Just anything you think might have some dual use. Because," his gaze snapped down to the time and temperature reading, "the air temperature is twelve," he looked back out the windshield, "and with the way it's blowing out there, the wind chill is probably negative twelve. So worst case, whether it's walking, or hunkering down, we're still going to need every layer we can get."

At their current speed, fifteen to twenty miles per hour, it could easily take them hours to find a town. But with the way the snow was piling up . . . a good two inches on the ground now, and it was heavy and wet hitting the windows . . . he didn't want to risk a spin out by going any faster. The bottom layer on the road was probably ice by now.

It would be suicide to gun it.

JJ was already unbuckling her seat belt, before Hotch had even finished talking. And when he did, she gave him a swift nod, "right, right, I got it," she murmured while turning to climb over the seat into the back row.

Reid gave her a boost.

Once she was situated in the third row and pulling their bags over from the way back so she could see what else was in there, Hotch snapped on the middle dome light. It illuminated the whole latter half of the vehicle.

Then his attention shifted to Emily.

"Prentiss," their eyes caught for a second in the mirror, "you're in charge of food and water."

He called back to JJ.

"JJ, yell out what you find for supplies, Prentiss will make an inventory in case we need to figure out rations later."

Hopefully they wouldn't end up needed to ration anything. But under the circumstances, it was best to prepare for the worst. Mostly though, he was having them make these lists now, because it was something to keep them occupied.

It would lower their stress levels to stay busy.

"Yep," Emily nodded as she started pulling off her gloves so she could get the pen and interview pad from her inner pocket, "I'll take care of it."

As she unzipped her parka to get her writing utensils, she heard Hotch giving Morgan orders to tally up their weapons, ammunition, flashlights and batteries. Again, JJ was instructed to yell out what she found in the back.

Seeing Morgan then start patting the pockets of his puffy coat for a pen, and knowing he wouldn't have one in there . . . he'd never worn that coat before, it was new . . . Emily felt a little twinge of guilt for yelling at him. Yes, he _had_ been annoying with his questions, but he'd only been asking them because he was getting antsy. And when he got antsy he needed to talk things through.

And she knew that.

So she decided that this was a good opportunity to make peace, because it was never good to let things fester. Not in their line of work.

Too many bad things could happen.

"Here," she tapped his shoulder with the blue gel pen in her hand, "take this one. I've got a spare." When he turned in his seat, reaching back to take the instrument out of her hand, Emily gave him a little smile.

"Still friends?" she whispered hopefully, and his eyes crinkled.

"Of course we're still friends," he answered in the same quiet tone she'd spoken in, "it's not the first time you've called me a dick."

"And it won't be the last," she immediately shot back with a smirk. And even though Derek laughed at that, hearing Hotch clear his throat, Emily's attention shifted over to see him giving her a look in the rearview mirror.

She winked at him.

Then she looked back at Derek.

"Here," she tore off a page from her notebook, "I've got extra paper too."

His lip quirked up.

"Thanks."

Then he turned back around, now fully armed with list making supplies, to start making his own list.

As she was digging out her other pen, Emily heard Reid clear his throat.

"Um, Hotch. Don't you have anything for me to do?"

"Ah right, Spencer," Hotch nodded, "yes, I do have a job for you. Presuming we do run out of gas, I need you, quietly to yourself, figure out our best options from there. Basically how long can we survive walking, versus how long we can survive inside here."

That was about as complicated a nonsense task, as he could think for him.

"But Hotch," Reid's brow wrinkled, "there are so many variables there that would affect the answers for each of us individually."

"That's fine Reid." Hotch nodded as he turned up the windshield wipers a notch, "just write it down, and if the time comes that might help make our decisions on staying or going."

Though Emily was pretending like she wasn't paying attention to their conversation, at Hotch's words, still her mouth twisted in a faint, wistful smile. Because she was quite sure that their boss had already decided if the time came, who would be walking for help, and who would be sheltering in place.

Basically he and Derek would be going, and the rest of them would be staying.

But he also knew that Spencer needed something to do too. And these were varied calculations for five different people of different heights and weight and ages. He would figure all the numbers out perfectly.

And that math that would keep his brain busy for a few minutes.

Because sure enough, as soon as Hotch stopped speaking, Reid immediately got down to business using the calculator on his otherwise useless phone.

Emily quietly passed him a piece of paper to write down his results. Then she patted his knee, and went back to her own list.

She'd already written down all of the supplies she had with her:

 _Two bottles of water, a half empty bottle of Diet Coke leftover from the plane, four chewy chocolate granola bars, three mini boxes of raisins, one snack bag of pizza flavored Combos (just picked up at the airport because they sounded like a good idea at the time), pack of Ring Dings (also just picked up at the airport because F it, they were Ring Dings and when do you see Ring Dings at the airport) and then lastly, two cellophaned, squished nearly flat, Hostess cupcakes that she kept forgetting to take out of the side pocket of her bag._

Hmph . . . she tipped her head while reading it all over again . . . that was actually a pretty good haul. And those were just her supplies! Granted, they needed a hell of a lot more liquids to get by for any length of time, but even what she had alone was enough food to last the five of them until tomorrow. So basically she was thinking they should be in good shape if everyone else had a comparable amount of stuff with them.

And they all should.

Given that they never knew what kind of facilities they'd end up with from town to town, everyone generally carried a few of their own personal favorite snacks, everywhere they went. Basically they packed like old timey boxcar hobos.

Thank God.

And it was just at that point where she'd finished writing down her own supplies, that JJ interrupted her train of thought.

"You guys ready for me to start rattling stuff off from back here?"

"Yep," Emily nodded, "I'm good, but I already know what I have for food, and Morgan," she turned slightly to direct her comments to the front seat, "I've got my Sig, you know it's a P226, and I'm carrying two clips, plus I have four extra in my bag."

Morgan nodded while jotting down her ammo.

"Six clips," he mumbled, "got it."

"Actually," Hotch cut in, "make that thirteen clips total for the P226. I also have two on me, plus five in my bag. And I've got two spares for the Glock 23."

Then JJ yelled out from the back.

"I've got five more Glock clips."

"All right," Morgan scribbled down the updated number, "then counting what's in _my_ bag, that brings the count up to thirteen." Then he turned slightly.

"Reid?"

Spencer lifted his head up to state distractedly, "one box of .38 cal. It's three quarters full."

Then he went back to his numbers.

"K," Morgan projected his voice, "anything else Jayje?"

"Yeah," she tapped the case under her feet, "three unloaded, standard issue, Remington 870 shotguns, and four boxes of shells. That's the last of the weapons. But we also have," she leaned over to look into the way back again, "six large Mag lights, no extra batteries, three pairs of night vision binoculars, two pairs of regular binoculars, pack of flex-cuffs, box of evidence bags, box of rubber gloves, pack of Lysol wipes, eight bullet proof vests, basic first aid kit, unopened, a box of flares, a set of walkie talkies, a bottle of anti-freeze, an ice scraper, a tire iron, and," she turned back around, "one spare tire. That's it for you Derek. Want me to repeat anything?"

It was a crap load of stuff to list off at once, but . . . they were trained to remember a crap load of stuff at once. So JJ was figuring he was probably fine. And sure enough, though she could still see him bent over his list, writing, he called back, "no, no, I'm good."

So she turned her attention to Emily.

"Ready Em?" She asked fairly rhetorically, given that she could clearly see her friend had pen and paper in hand. And sure enough, Emily tipped her head.

"Shoot."

"All right, for what's in the SUV itself, they gave us a half a case of Aquafina water, which equals seven sixteen ounce bottles. They're cold, but not frozen."

She looked up.

"And that's it," she shrugged, "unless there's some gum in the glove compartment."

"Hmph," Emily mumbled, "okay. But that's just as well because we needed the water, so at least they gave us some." Then she looked up and around at her teammates.

"Do you guys know what you have for food?" She asked them generally, "and if not, do you mind JJ digging into your bags to find out?"

It turned out that nobody cared about JJ rifling through their stuff, because nobody knew exactly what was left in their bags, except for Hotch because he'd just re-packed his. And he had quote, "four peanut butter protein bars, two snack packages of mixed nuts, one mini bag of chocolate covered pretzels, two bottles of water, and two bottles of Gatorade."

Emily's eyes crinkled slightly when Hotch mentioned the pretzels.

She'd bought them for him at the airport.

And with him and her done, from there it was JJ rattling off what was left in the last three bags.

Hers: Two unopened sleeves of saltines, large bag of Hershey kisses, large bag of craisins, three strawberry Soy Joy bars, one chocolate almond Clif bar, two bottles of water, and a six pack of mini-ginger ales.

Morgan's: Six chocolate protein bars, a half empty jar of peanut butter, a roll of Ritz crackers, two Monster energy drinks, and one bottle of water.

And finally, Spencer's: Two packages of Red Vines, a large bag of off brand Oatmeal raisin cookies, a quart sized ziplock filled with double stuffed Oreos, and three bottles of Cherry Coke.

It didn't surprise Emily in the slightest, that Reid had packed nothing but pure sugar. But this wasn't the time for commentary. She'd speak to him about the dangers of rotting out his teeth, when they got home.

For now, as she tucked the list into her inside pocket before pulling her gloves back on, she was just feeling pretty good about them having this inventory done. Her gaze shifted to the man in the front seat.

Hotch was right. Better to get organized now for a worst case scenario, and then cross their fingers that they wouldn't need to go into survival mode. After all, as she bit down a shiver, she knew it was possible that at any time, they could suddenly spot a sign for a town or even just a side road leading up to somebody's farm.

Or a hunting cabin.

Really, just because they were in the back woods, it didn't mean that there was nobody out here. After all, SOMEBODY paved this road that they were driving on! And also, in America in the twenty-first century, provided you stayed on a paved road . . . which they were . . . it was actually VERY hard, to get lost and STAY lost, for any true length of time. Right now they were definitely lost, but that was because of the weather.

It was just the snow screwing them up.

But even the worst of snowstorms blew out within a day. So the snow should end by tonight, if not then definitely by sometime tomorrow morning. Yeah . . . she nodded to herself as Hotch flipped off the dome light . . . even if they did get stranded for a bit, by morning, they'd be able to get their bearings no problem.

She was sure of it.

And she was about to share her 'Susie Sunshine' thoughts on this matter with the rest of the team . . . everyone could use a bit of cheering up, especially Hotch, the least 'sunshiny' of them all . . . when suddenly she saw a flash of light in the rearview mirror.

It was coming up fast.

So fast in fact, that it took her a second to process what the light meant. But then her brain caught up, and her eyes popped in astonishment.

Headlights!

Holy crap! Those were freaking headlights!

That was _civilization_ back there!

And she was definitely not the only one seeing them. Because suddenly everyone was talking at once and, aside from Hotch, shifting around, trying to see who was behind them. Maybe if they were INCREDIBLY lucky, it would be a State Trooper or some other law enforcement!

And she was just about to say something to Hotch about possibly pulling over, when she realized that the headlights that had appeared perhaps five seconds earlier, were getting brighter and brighter in the rearview mirror. That vehicle . . . whatever it was, she still couldn't see . . . was going ENTIRELY too fast!

OH SHIT!

They were about to have a major collision!

Just as she was yelling out, "HOTCH, BREAK LEFT!" he was simultaneously yelling for everyone to, "HOLD ON!"

Apparently they'd seen the same thing at the same time.

All she had time to do was grab the overhead strap before Hotch took a sharp swerve to the left. He was trying to get them out of the way, but it was only a four lane road . . . two running in each direction. And they were surrounded by the forest.

There wasn't much maneuverability.

Still though, Hotch was about the best offensive (and defensive) driver, Emily had ever known. And she could feel him tapping the brakes, trying to keep control of the vehicle even as they moved from the center, towards the shoulder. The shoulder itself was almost non-existent, but there was at least some place to go.

And it looked like they were about to going to make it . . . he was slowing them down, pulling off the far lane . . . when suddenly something happened. Emily couldn't quite figure out what it was. It was like they were . . . shoved.

If that was even possible.

She wouldn't have thought that it was. But whatever happened, suddenly they were shooting back across three lanes of slippery . . . snow covered . . . road. From his cursing, it was clear that Hotch couldn't get control that time. Then Emily's heart shot up into her throat.

Because were spinning.

Around . . . and around.

And around.

JJ screamed. So did Reid.

She might have too. It was hard to say, it was all happening so God damned fast. But then those lights that had been coming up behind them . . . they were directly out her side window. It was a big black car.

And they were about to get T-boned.

"CAR!" She screeched just before impact.

And then there was the smashing of steel against steel . . . and they were spinning even faster. She was knocked into Reid, smacking her head against his . . . though by some miracle she wasn't crushed by the other vehicle. The impact must have been just behind her.

JJ!

The thought flew into Emily's brain . . . the impact would have been where JJ was sitting . . . but she had no time to catch it. Because things were still moving too fast! They'd finally spun off the road. And now once again her window was filling with a new picture. This time it was trees.

Nothing but trees.

OH JESUS!

She threw her arms over her face a split second before the glass exploded into it. Along with it came sharp branches, and snow covered pine needles.

The SUV had finally stopped moving.

And the wind that had been blowing outside, was now blowing inside too. She could also hear someone screaming.

It sounded like they were in agony.

And with her whole side aching, and her head pounding, she tentatively dropped her arms down from her face.

Still though, all around her, everything was still spinning . . . though really she knew they were standing still. She blinked, trying to clear the fog in her brain from that crack to her skull. Because she could still hear the screaming, and someone else was sobbing. And she needed to help them.

But she just couldn't focus.

Then she heard Hotch calling her name. He was telling her to undo her belt. To hurry.

To hurry up and come help him.

She blinked again even as her gloved hands fumbled for the silver latch at her waist. Because head spinning or not, she was ingrained to follow orders.

Especially Hotch's.

As the belt snapped back, a blast of frigid wind and snow simultaneously hit her face. With it though came some clarity, because it was the equivalent of someone throwing a cup of water at her.

That time when she looked up, she could see Hotch was already out of his belt and up on his knees in his seat.

He was leaning over the console, with one hand on Morgan's arm and the other on his knee. He was murmuring softly to him, telling him it would be okay. It was then that Emily realized . . . that was where the screaming had been coming from.

Derek.

Tentatively, and with a rising sense of horror and dread, she pushed herself up and leaned forward. She looked over into the front seat.

What she saw almost made her throw up.

The branch that had crashed through the glass, breaking the window, it had also crashed into Morgan. It had gone right through his left eye.

And that's why he couldn't stop screaming.

* * *

 _A/N 2 (again, original): Aaaah Morgan! And gross! Eyeballs! But I told you going in, made no promises about health and safety :) And what would be the point of going into the supernatural realm, if we didn't hit the ground running?!_

 _So why is there a new story? Short answer, I have some occasional "anger issues" :) And I've found that writing horror stories is a WONDERFUL way to vent out the darkness that occasionally boils up. Truly, if you can, it's highly recommended. That's how we've gotten all of the ugly stories I've written to date . . . my messed up brain needed an outlet. And I've had no outlet for this stuff for a while, so I just started scribbling one day when I needed to work in a darker palette, then the world started to form in my head, and here we are._

 _To this story, for their supplies, it is important to know what exactly they have at their disposal while entering this environment. And I was going to just do a quick narrative on that, but then I was thinking about what each of them would actually bring, and how that played into the characterizations themselves, so I thought it would be good to bullet it out. Derek with his muscle man stuff, Reid with a ridiculous sweet tooth. Pregnant JJ with her healthy snacks and her first trimester morning sickness crackers and ginger ale. I thought it added in extra layers to them as people, so I left in the nitty gritty._

 _And I was going to send them to Derry for the missing kids, because, duh. But, it was in the wrong part of the state. I actually found Stephen King's 'map of Maine' on his website, and it shows Derry down by Bangor and it would have been VERY hard to get turned around and end up in Salem's Lot, which it shows as being much further north. Again, by his map. And they're his towns, so :)_


	2. Over The Hills And Far Away

**Author's Note** : Welcome back, my scattering of old and new readers! I have been receiving a very warm welcome so far to my return. And that has been very nice :)

Now, a direct continuation.

* * *

 **Over The Hills And Far Away**

"Oh sweet Jesus," Emily whimpered over to Hotch as she looked at the gore running down Derek's face while listening to his screams, "what the . . .?!"

It wasn't even possible to get the question out, before Hotch gently cut her off.

"I know Prentiss," he murmured back while shooting her a look, "I _know_. But we have to deal with it. Just uh," he jerked his head towards the back, "get the uh, the kit. That first aid kit JJ mentioned. Get that, and the gloves and some blankets to warm him, and we'll just," he swallowed as his gaze snapped back to Morgan's face, "deal with it."

Hotch's voice faded off on the last few words. Because really, how the FUCK they were going to _deal_ with it, he didn't know! Clearly none of their first aid training covered removing a God damn TREE from someone's SKULL!

And _that_ was the horrifying task in front of them!

"Right," Emily swallowed and blinked, trying to will away the moisture that had formed in her eyes, "right, the kit."

She turned then, stumbling past Reid who was looking dazed still strapped in and rubbing the side of his head. And as Hotch snapped on the dome lights, she was trying to climb over to get into the way back of the SUV. But that's when she saw the impact that the other car had made. It had crushed in the third row passenger side almost a foot. There was no longer any path there to get around the seats.

And she couldn't see JJ anywhere.

"JAYJE!" She yelled while scrambling up onto her original seat to peer down, "JAYJE! WHERE ARE YOU?!"

Just then she spotted JJ lying crumpled up on the floor mats, which was right when she heard Hotch from the front seat.

"WHERE IS SHE?! IS SHE ALL RIGHT?!"

"Um," Emily murmured anxiously while twisting to climb over the seat back, "I don't know! I can see her on the floor, but she's not answering me!"

As she got into the crunched up back row with her friend, Emily reached down, running both her eyes and her hands along JJ's body, looking for blood, and feeling for trauma. Fortunately she couldn't find anything.

At least nothing obvious.

"JJ," she pleaded then while slipping her hands under her back, now feeling for wet spots, "please answer me! Are you okay!?"

There was still no response, but Emily was at least comforted by the thumping she could feel from her friend's heart. Even through her jacket it was a steady beat.

As was the pulse she found in JJ's throat.

"She's alive!" She yelled excitedly over to Hotch, "but I don't know what's wrong with her! I mean," her gaze bounced from one end of JJ's body to the other, "she wasn't belted in, so she might have hit her head I guess, but I don't see any blood!"

"All right!" Hotch hollered back while scrubbing his hand across his forehead, trying to make himself heard over the sound of Morgan's continuing wails, "we'll assume she just got knocked out! But as long as she's breathing all right, and you don't see that she's bleeding, leave her for a minute and find the kit and the gloves! We'll take care of Morgan first!"

In response to that game plane, he heard Emily yell a, "right!" as she bounced up, twisting to reach into the way back storage, "the kit!"

Though Hotch hated to just abandon JJ on the floor, they had to prioritize the wounded. And Morgan obviously had to take the full priority at the moment. Once they had him stable though, they'd get back to JJ. Hotch's gaze shifted.

And Reid.

Though he was at least conscious, he didn't look good. And as evidenced when Hotch leaned over and snapped his fingers in Spencer's face, it took him at least a second to look up.

And his eyes still weren't focused.

God damn it . . . Hotch's teeth ground together . . . five of them in the SUV, three of them with a likely head injury, one CRITICALLY injured, and they were lost out in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, during a snowstorm!

 _Could it GET any worse?!_

"How's it GOING back there, Prentiss?!" He called tightly, trying not to sound like an asshole. But seconds were being lost that they did NOT have to lose!

"I'm looking," came the muffled response, "I found the blankets, but the accident made a mess of everything here! Oh, wait!" She popped up, yelling over her shoulder.

"GOT 'EM!"

In one hand he saw that she now had the med kit, and in the other, the box of gloves.

Two blankets were hanging off her shoulder.

"Great," he twisted around, "throw the kit and the gloves!"

Emily leaned forward so she could toss the two boxes to Hotch, with the best aim she could.

He caught them both against his chest.

And even as she saw him tearing the cellophane off the med kit, she was hurriedly pulling herself back over the seats, trying to keep from dropping the blankets as she moved from one row to the next.

It was just then that everything went quiet. All except for the wind that is. That had been, and still was, a recurrent, sharp whistle, blowing in since the front passenger window had been smashed. But realizing what it meant that the wind was the only sound left, Emily's head snapped up.

Morgan had stopped screaming!

"Hotch?!" She called out, again half in a panic while stumbling forward the last step, "is he . . ."

"Yeah," Hotch gave a sharp nod as his hand fell off Morgan's carotid, "yeah, he's still alive. He just passed out. Just as well," he continued with a murmur while going back to digging in the kit, "he doesn't need to be awake for this."

It was astounding that he hadn't passed out when the branch had first gone in. Christ . . . Hotch winced as he looked over him . . . he couldn't even imagine the level of agony he must have been in to lose consciousness.

It really was a testament to his strength that he'd even stayed awake as long as he had.

"How do you want to do it?" Emily asked quietly, trying to keep her voice hard and detached though she was feeling anything but. Because in her mind, she was running through the next ten minutes of her life, and she knew only one thing could be true of them.

They were going to be absolutely horrible.

And she could see from the tightness around Hotch's mouth, that he knew that too. Because he gestured for her to come closer, and when she had moved right up next to the console, he leaned over just in case Morgan could still hear anything they were saying.

"We're going to have to go outside," he whispered in her ear, "it's the only way we'll have the right angle to do it fast. I'll," he swallowed, "I'll pull it out, but that means," he shook his head, "and I'm so sorry about this Prentiss, but you're going to have to be ready to do whatever needs to be done next."

Feeling her stomach flip at the implications there, Emily bit down, hard, on her lip . . . shit. Though she'd figured that the cleanup would be her part of the process, it didn't make it any easier hearing it out loud. But she knew it had to be that way. That branch was thick, and probably heavy. So obviously Hotch would be able to get it yanked out faster than she would.

"We are doing it fast, right?" she murmured back to him, while pushing down a chill from the bitter wind blowing in from the broken side window. And he nodded.

"Yeah," he answered softly, "and I know that's not ideal for the wound itself, but under the circumstances we just need to get it done."

It wasn't as though they had paramedics on standby waiting to WHISK Derek off to an ophthalmological trauma unit that might be able to pull everything back together again. Whether they moved fast or slow, he was losing that eye either way. Hotch swallowed.

No doubt about it.

"Okay, um," Emily ground her teeth together, "well there should be tape in the kit to hold the bandage in place. And I guess if I just get all the pieces torn off first, it should work."

She took a breath, and leaned back slightly.

"You think we have everything we'll need?"

"Yeah," Hotch nodded as he pulled a pair of the rubber gloves out of the box, "and put these on before you do your part," he held a glove up in front of her, "put them over your winter gloves. They should stretch fine. But either way, you need to keep your other gloves on or you won't have the dexterity in your fingers to do anything."

It was so cold out, she'd be lucky if her hands didn't stiffen up even with the two layers. But fortunately, (if that was the word), it was so cold outside, that for their entire ride, it had been chilly in the SUV even with the heat on, so they both were still in their full winter gear. All Hotch had to do was yank his ski hat back on . . . which he quickly did . . . and he was ready to go.

And with Emily already bundled up, he hurriedly helped her finish getting the supplies she'd need from the kit. After they'd put together an oversized bandage with an extra thick gauze pad in the middle, she tore off a dozen small strips of tape, which he made sure were stuck loosely to the glove box.

That way they'd be handy for Emily to grab them when she was bandaging Derek up.

Hotch's thoughts of the steps in their emergency triage, were interrupted by an unexpected question from an unexpected person.

"Can I help?"

It was Reid.

His voice was a bit tentative, and Hotch's head snapped up to look over into his youngest agent's, wide, frightened eyes. One pupil still looked a bit enlarged, probably a concussion there, but for the most part he seemed to be focused now in his attention.

Thank Christ.

Though to Hotch, at that moment, he'd never looked more like the kid that he was.

"Yeah Spencer," he answered softly while tipping his head towards Morgan, "if you're up to it, you could come up here, and get him all covered up as soon as we're done. But also be ready to pass Emily the tape for the bandaging part. It'll go faster."

Though Hotch was saying, "pass Emily the tape" what he really meant was "be ready to hold Derek down" if he wakes up. But hopefully their friend would stay mercifully unconscious, so there was no need to scare the shit out of Reid unnecessarily.

Things were bad enough as it was.

"Okay," Spencer nodded slowly as he shifted forward on the bench seat, "okay, I can do that."

If they were doing all the hard stuff . . . and he could see from his angle behind Hotch's seat, just how bad Derek's injury was . . . the least he could do was help with the tape and the blankets.

So Hotch climbed over into the back, and Reid inched around him so he could climb around into the driver's seat. Of course it would have been easier for them to switch by getting out of the vehicle, but they were trying to conserve as much heat as they could, and there was no reason to be opening and closing the doors more than they had too.

It would make a wind tunnel.

But once everyone was in place, Reid with the folded blankets in his lap/bandage in hand, and Emily both winter and rubber gloved up, Hotch did reach out to grasp the back door handle behind the driver's seat.

"All right, Prentiss," he took a breath, "let me check out there first."

Hearing a faint, "okay," from her, he pushed the door open, and climbed out into the so not magical winter wonderland surrounding them. And though Hotch had thought he would be somewhat prepared for the change in temperature by the wind blowing in through the broken window . . . he wasn't. Because stepping outside was like having tiny little razor blades whipped at his face.

'Bitterly cold,' didn't even begin to describe it.

Not to mention that his boots were buried in at least three inches of snow, which was covering either asphalt or grass, he really couldn't tell. He just knew that they were somewhere to the right of the actual far lane of the bi-way. And that car that had hit them . . . his hand fell to his holster and he squinted while turning to look back and forth in either direction . . . he couldn't see it anywhere. Granted, visibility was not that great, and there weren't any light poles lining the road . . . they just had the glow of the cabin lights and the headlights to see by . . . but still, big black car, wide, white road, it seemed that if the car _was_ still within the immediate vicinity, he'd be able to tell.

But he couldn't.

And it made him a little uneasy to not know where it had gone. Because who the hell rammed somebody off the side of the road during a snowstorm, and then just kept going? The driver should have stopped, or at least slowed down, to see if they were all right.

It was the only DECENT thing to do!

But whatever . . . his jaw clenched as he took a few steps forward . . . he knew better than to expect decency of his fellow travelers on the planet. But for some reason he just kept hoping, and of course they just kept letting him down.

Someday he'd learn his lesson.

But on this day, he tried to shake off his unease about the missing car and driver, because he knew that regardless of the outcome of the accident . . . the grievous injuries to poor Derek . . . that there was no real reason to believe that the jackass had meant them any _deliberate_ harm. Hotch's jaw clenched.

Most likely he was just some idiot driving too fast for the road conditions.

Really . . . he turned his head to look around into the darkened woods behind him . . . what else could it be?

So with no car in sight, and no perceived, 'danger' in the woods immediately around them . . . with their luck a freaking grizzly bear could have been camped out on the side of the road . . . Hotch stepped back and gestured for Emily to come out and join him.

Seeing her face when she jumped down by his side, it was clear from the look of shock that she wasn't ready for the brutality of the wind either.

She smacked the backs of her gloved hands over her face.

"Holy shit!"

"Yeah," he took her arm, pulling her out of the way so he could slam the door shut, "I know. Just move fast."

So with Emily's teeth already chattering . . . he knew she was always cold anyway . . . they ran through the rapidly piling snow, and around the front of the SUV, to get over to Derek's door.

Getting around the front end of the vehicle was easy, actually getting to the passenger door itself, not so much.

Because the God damn tree (like the whole _fucking tree_ ) was right there, PRESSED against the front of the SUV! That was not something that had been apparent from their vantage point inside. And now that they were out, and Hotch saw just how thick the outer portion of the branch was that had crashed through the window, his teeth ground together.

"Shit," he pulled Emily closer, leaning down so she could hear him over the wind, "this isn't going to work. It's too thick. I can't break that."

His expertise was in Krav Maga, but they did NOT have a chop maneuver to break off what was essentially a six inch thick LOG!

He'd need a God damn chain saw!

But then he saw Emily's shaking hand pointing to the section closest to Morgan's face.

"Sure you can," her finger hovered over the mossy wood, "break it right there. It's only a couple inches thick. You can use your pocketknife to wear it down."

Though her idea was not a bad one, still Hotch blanched and turned away.

"No, I can't," he muttered back, "I can't do it there. There's no way to maneuver, I'll end up grinding the piece into his brain."

Seeing that Hotch, for one of the few times in their history, was having a moment of personal doubt in his abilities . . . it was almost unheard of . . . Emily's expression softened as she reached out to touch his cheek with the back of her glove. She turned his face back towards her.

When his gaze reluctantly shifted down, she shook her head.

"You won't do that," she responded calmly, "because you'll be careful. I know you will be, because you're always careful. You can do this, and it'll be all right."

It actually wasn't going to be all right at all. But at this point, as far as additional injuries went, there really was LITTLE damage that Hotch could do to Morgan's eye, or even his brain, that hadn't already been done on impact. And she knew that when it came to the odds of accidentally grinding the branch in even further, that, again, it just wouldn't happen. Hotch wouldn't _allow_ it to happen.

Even if he didn't know that, she did.

Feeling his teeth begin to chatter . . . the cold was finally starting to get to him too . . . Hotch looked down at Emily, at the faith he could see in her eyes. And she was never one to bullshit him. Which meant that if she believed that he could do this safely, then maybe he really could.

So he gave her a little nod and she shifted back, out of the way. Then he pulled out his pocketknife, and snapped it open. And with one deep breath, and one silent prayer, he climbed up on the running board, leaned through the window . . . and with one hand bracing his work . . . he _oh so carefully_ , began to saw down on the branch.

And Emily was right, he didn't grind it in. He held it steady. And it only took a dozen slow saws of the blade, to cut through the wood. Fortunately it was a bit dry this late in the season. So now there was just the outer strand of bark holding the smaller end of the branch, onto the larger part of the tree.

He was about to try slicing it, when a pair of scissors suddenly appeared in front of him.

They were the ones from the kit.

"I think these will be steadier," Reid murmured from Morgan's other side.

And he was right. So Hotch snapped his knife closed, and jammed it into his pocket. Then he took the scissors instead.

It took just one final snip . . . and he was done.

But knowing that time was passing, without taking even another breath, he threw the scissors onto the dashboard, and tightened his fist around the remaining shard of wood sticking out of Morgan's face.

He yanked.

Out it came, with bloodied, viscous fluid dripping from the end.

And on the _very_ end, came what was left of Morgan's mangled eye.

Though that had been expected, seeing it pop out, and then the mutilated, bloody, material dangling on his cheek, it was the closest Hotch had ever come to throwing up on the job. Because this wasn't a case, and it wasn't a stranger.

It was his friend.

And his own eyes burned seeing what had become of him. He could also hear Reid choking down a gag, and Emily's moan from his side. But there would be time for grief later.

Now there was still work to do.

So he dropped back, holding the bloodied stick behind him with one hand, and using the other to push Emily around him.

And though he knew how much she was hurting, there was no hesitation in her movements.

She immediately climbed up onto the running board, and leaned over.

Emily sucked in a breath, and went to a place far away in her mind. She was back on her first day at the BAU. Her first real day. The day she'd met the team.

The day she'd met Derek.

When she'd shaken his hand and he'd flashed just a hint of that Colgate grin. He was so handsome and so confident. And while she thought back on their early days, and the friendship he'd offered when nobody else did, in the now, with her cold, rubber gloves, and her mouth twisted in a tight grimace, she tucked the loose bits of drippy goo back into the empty socket. It wasn't sanitary, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.

So with her mind still far in the past, she snatched the bandage they'd prepared, from Reid's shaking hand.

And with the two of them working together, she got it positioned to hold everything in place. Then she quickly taped it down, using the bits that she and Hotch had ripped off a few minutes earlier. It was like wrapping a present, she thought, as the tears finally began to fill her eyes, that's what she was doing, just wrapping a present.

Like that Playboy calendar she'd given Derek as a joke for Christmas. ' _Something to keep you busy on Friday nights_ ,' she'd written on the card.

They'd both laughed when he'd opened it.

But now she felt badly. Because she should have given him a real present.

A nice one.

Emily didn't even realize that the tears in her eyes had started to spill over, until they began to freeze on her face. That was also when she realized that the job was done.

The cavity which once held Derek's right eyeball, was covered over now.

Morgan himself was still passed out. Thank God for that small favor. And while she'd been working, Hotch had been able to break off the rest of the branch which had broken through the window.

He'd used his weight to snap it in half.

And when she turned to him, with her bloody gloves, and the tears frozen on her cheeks, he stopped short.

"Oh Emily," he murmured, his face twisting in pain and sympathy, "I'm sorry."

Then he quickly snapped the dirty gloves from her hands, and threw them down into the snow.

A splatter of red in the sea of white.

After that, he tucked her under his arm, and as he hurried them around the vehicle again, with his free hand he was brushing the icy tears from her skin.

Once they'd reached the back door, he yanked it open and helped her up.

He was barely a half a step behind her, his hand on her hip to steady them both with their icy boots. And then they were inside . . . and the door slammed shut.

The wind cut back to a howl.

When they dropped onto the backseat, they were both huffing their breaths, shaking from the cold and the adrenaline. Still though, neither of them paused moving for more than a moment. Once Emily sniffled, "JJ," after a quick pat of support to her arm (all he could do to offer comfort under the circumstances), Hotch immediately turned to help her as she began to crawl over into the third row again.

Once she was kneeling on the back seat, he looked down at the two women, his brow wrinkled with concern as he rubbed his hands together, still trying to get warm.

"How is she?" he murmured worriedly.

"Um," for a second Emily hesitated in her response, "well, she's obviously still out. But," she brushed JJ's hair back, "I can see a bump on her forehead now. It wasn't visible before."

Her still being unconscious was worrisome though. Because it had been a solid seven or eight minutes since the accident.

JJ should have woken up by now.

But then Emily had an idea. With her right hand, she dragged her glove covered fingers along her jacket, scooping up the small bit of snow that had fallen onto her, but hadn't melted yet.

She brushed the residue along JJ's cheek.

Her hope was that the icy water would jar her awake, and she did actually see her head jerk slightly. But when Emily called her name, JJ still didn't open her eyes.

So Emily looked up, and then reached out to do the same thing to Hotch's jacket that she'd just done to her own.

That time she let the water drip right down over JJ's eyes and forehead, again while saying her name. This time more loudly though. And once more her friend seemed to be reacting to the cold water, but she just didn't appear to be fully waking up. And Emily was just about to ask Hotch if he could get her a handful of snow from outside, when she saw a glorious sight.

JJ's lashes began to flutter.

"Oh, Hotch," Emily whispered, just before JJ's eyes popped open.

She blinked, and then groaned.

"What happened?"

Feeling a flood of relief that JJ was once more conscious, and seemed to be in possession of her faculties, Hotch stepped into the conversation.

"We had an accident, and you've been unconscious for a few minutes." He bit his lip, "how do you feel?"

Her color was a bit pasty, but that could just be the cold settling into the cabin.

They needed to cover that God damn hole.

"Um," JJ blinked again, "okay, I think. My head hurts a bit, but not too bad." The she tried to push herself up from where she was wedged down on the floor . . . Hotch and Emily both immediately reached down for her.

And as they helped her up onto the back row of seats, she bit down on her lip.

"I'm also a little nauseous," she added with a faint, worried murmur. And when Emily started to point out that was probably just from the knock on the head, JJ shook her head. Then she looked up at Hotch. Because he was the one that she needed to tell first.

He needed to know.

"I'm pregnant."

And she could see his eyes widen in surprise . . . clearly this was not news he was expecting today. Yeah, well, join the club, Hotch. Because this was not news that she'd been expecting to have to SHARE today! It had been her plan to keep the pregnancy to herself for a few more months. She chewed her lip nervously as her hand lightly pressed against her stomach.

But things change.

"Oh, uh . . ."

For a second Hotch stammered for a response. But then his wide eyes dropped down from JJ's worried ones, to the hidden waist beneath her coat.

"How far along?" He whispered.

"Six weeks," came the quiet response.

Quiet because she was worried not only about the baby . . . the nausea might not be from the head injury . . . but Hotch's reaction to this news. That he might be disappointed in her for an unplanned pregnancy when she wasn't even in a settled relationship. And though she knew that it was stupid to be worried about such a thing right now, she couldn't help it.

His good opinion meant the world to her.

But then she saw his expression soften, and when he looked back at her he reached over and squeezed her shoulder.

"Do you have any pain in your abdomen?"

The tone of his question was one of concern, not of irritation, or condemnation. That made her feel a little better, if not in terms of her condition, at least in terms of his reaction . . . that he wasn't upset.

She shook her head.

"I don't think so," she bit her lip as she gently patted her stomach, "but like I said, I do feel a little sick, and it's about ten hours too late for morning sickness."

"All right, um," Hotch's attention snapped over to Emily . . . she was just staring at JJ in shock.

"Prentiss."

Her eyes darted over to his and he continued softly, but firmly.

"Check under her clothes, front and back, make sure there's no visible bruising around her torso or upper pelvis. If there isn't," his eyes snapped back to JJ's, "and you don't develop any other symptoms that could be related to a problem with the baby, then we'll assume the nausea is just from bumping your head," then he gave her a look, "but you tell us _immediately_ if you start to feel any worse, okay?"

Though he didn't know what they'd be able to do for her if she started to miscarry besides just have her lie down, at least if they could rule out a _likely_ problem with the pregnancy, that would be one LESS concern weighing down on him at the moment. It was shock enough finding out that she was pregnant when he didn't even realize she was seeing anyone.

And he didn't know how he'd live with her losing the baby on his watch.

Feeling her eyes start to sting, JJ gave a sharp nod back.

"Okay."

And she started to unzip her parka as Hotch turned away from her and Emily, moving towards the front of the cab to speak to Reid. And so with Emily's help, JJ quickly loosened her layers, and undid her belt and pants. Then she turned, putting her back to her friend as she lifted her jacket and sweater.

Then she felt that material being tugged a little higher right before Emily murmured, "your back looks fine." Then she dropped her jacket and sweater. So JJ turned around, and as the two women repeated the same process of lifting up the clothes in the front, their eyes met.

For a second they just stared at one another . . . then Emily looked down. Her expression immediately tightened just before she pulled slightly on JJ's pants.

"Turn a little to the right and push your underwear down a bit off your hip," she whispered.

Feeling her tension levels rising . . . obviously she'd just seen something that looked off . . . JJ did as instructed, while still trying to hold up her coat and sweater at the same time. Then she felt Emily's gloved fingers brushing along her skin, pushing the cotton material down a little more.

"There is a small bruise here on your hip," she came back softly, "but it doesn't seem to spread anywhere close enough to where the baby could have been bumped."

Emily's gaze shifted down to the floor where JJ had been lying.

"There," her hand came off JJ's hip to point down to the metal box that was sticking out from under the seat, "the rifle case. You probably fell on it, but," she looked back, up her expression softening when she saw the fear in JJ's eyes, "it really is a very localized mark, and it's right on the hip bone, so I'd be surprised if it hit any soft tissue in the front. And you also only fell down a foot to the floor, so the impact wouldn't have been more than a mild bump too."

Though Emily was of course immensely thankful that it was unlikely JJ's baby had been injured, for some reason she still couldn't voice the "congratulations" that she knew was expected for her to say at the moment of such news being shared. Perhaps it was only the timing of the announcement holding her back. After all, she had just cleaned up shredded eye gore from Derek's cheek.

She wasn't ready yet for happy news.

Still though, she didn't want JJ to worry, so she tried to muster up a faint smile, though it probably came off more like a grimace, as she squeezed her arm.

"I think you're okay."

Then she turned away, reaching out to pull herself up and over the seat.

Hotch absentmindedly tugged Emily down next to him before he went back to doing what he'd just started doing.

Digging through the med kit.

Given that it was brand new, and the 'fanciest' kind they made, there was a lot of crap in it. But after another second, he finally pulled out four small packets of aspirin that he'd been looking for.

Seeing the items in Hotch's hand, Emily immediately shook her head.

"No aspirin for JJ," she murmured, "it'll thin her blood."

For a moment Hotch stared over at her in confusion, but before she had to explain the concern to him . . . if JJ did miscarry, they sure as hell didn't want her on blood thinners while she was bleeding out . . . Emily saw comprehension flash in his eyes.

"Right," he started digging again, "okay." Then he pulled out another packet and looked over with a purse of his lips.

"Tylenol all right?"

"Yep," Emily took it from his hands, "that's fine." She turned to pass it over her shoulder.

"For you," she said as JJ took the little packet from her hands, "and you should probably take some food with it too, so it doesn't bother your stomach anymore than it's already bothered."

"Actually," Hotch cut in, "everybody should eat something with the pills. Even if you're not hungry. Um," he turned, seeing JJ fixing the last of the buttons on her coat, "can you grab my bag and drop it on your seat, or is it not right there on top?"

Under the circumstances, in that they didn't know what was going on in JJ's abdominal cavity, he didn't want her doing anything strenuous. But his bag wasn't that heavy to drag down next to her.

But then he felt Emily touch his arm.

"Actually," she turned and started climbing over the seat, "l'll go, because I just thought of a solution to the window problem. We can use those extra vests. They should block the hole pretty well."

Also, they should pull their regular vests on now anyway. It was another layer of warmth.

And they needed every bit of warmth that they could get.

Hotch's brow wrinkled as he looked up towards the front of the cab.

"It's a good idea," he agreed, "but how are we going to keep them in place?"

"Flex cuffs," Reid cut in from the front where he'd been fixing Derek's blankets, then he leaned around the seat, "we can loop a couple together, hang them around the sun visor and the 'oh shit' handles," he nodded to himself, "it should work."

Feeling a genuine flicker of relief from the overwhelming stress pressing down on him . . . a truly workable solution to a major problem . . . Hotch nodded enthusiastically.

"Yeah, you're right, that should work just fine." So he turned. "Emily . . ."

But she cut him off.

"Yeah, I heard. I'll pull out everything we'll need."

So Hotch turned back, muttering, "great. But," his gaze shifted over to the passenger seat, "we also need to move Morgan to the back too."

Even if/when, he woke up, his injuries were obviously much too grievous to allow him to assist in getting them out of this mess. So better to get him strapped down in the way back, where JJ was now, and then they could get moving on, well, getting moving.

The lights in the cab were still working, so he knew the battery was fine, but they'd stalled out when they'd broadsided the stand of trees.

And though it was killing him not to know if they'd be able to drive again yet, he didn't want to even try the engine again until everything else was lined up.

For one thing they'd be wasting their limited gas, but more importantly, when he was outside, he'd seen that their tail pipe was pressed against a large pine tree. And he really didn't wish to take out his entire team with a slight carbon monoxide, "oops." He scowled slightly.

Spinning them off the road and blinding Morgan for life was his one great fuck up for the day.

And in the hopes of more quickly unfucking the major fuckery they were now in, he got up on his knees, before leaning over to scoop JJ off the back seat.

"Whoa," was her only response as she ducked to avoid bumping her head, and he twisted to gently put her down next to him on the bench.

"I don't want you moving around anymore than you have to," he shared by way of explanation. Then he gestured to the front seat.

"Morgan's been hurt pretty badly," he murmured. And seeing JJ's eyes widen in horror at the bloodied bandages clearly visible in the rearview mirror, he had to look away. His next words were directed at Reid.

"Unhook Morgan's seatbelt, but be careful it doesn't snap back on him."

So while Reid was VERY carefully getting Morgan untangled from his belt and JJ was reaching out to touch his arm, Hotch turned to climb over into the back where Emily was digging around in his duffle bag.

"Bottle of water, and bag of nuts," she muttered, "that's what I'm looking for, right?"

"Yeah," he tapped the side of the bag, "they should be in that corner." Then he kept moving passed her to reach into the truck area.

After digging around for a second, he found the stack of vests half buried under the spare tire which had slide against the driver's side wall.

He pulled the whole lot of the vests over onto the seat. And he was about to start looking for the flex cuffs when Emily tapped his thigh.

"Box is on the floor by your feet."

So he leaned down and picked them up.

"All right," he continued softly, "so what else do we need back here? Because once we move Morgan, it's obviously going to be harder to get into the way back again."

They'd be climbing on top of him, which was obviously not a good plan.

And he could see Emily biting her lip as she thought about the question. Finally she tipped her head.

"The flashlights obviously, and I think we should shift all of the duffles to the front so we can pull out more layers as needed. Even with the window blocked, there's obviously going to be a major draft blowing in over there. But the bags should mostly fit under the seats. Speaking of the seats," she lightly tapped the rifle case, "we should get the shells for these too." She looked up at Hotch.

"We still don't know who the hell hit us. Or if they'll come back."

For a second Hotch just stared at her, processing the words she'd just said. Finally his jaw clenched.

"I hadn't thought about them coming back," he shook his head, "and I don't know why."

For whatever reason the thought hadn't occurred to him, and that in and of itself was incredibly short-sighted and stupid. Stupid enough that he felt a wave of shame wash over him.

Because if he didn't start getting a better handle on this situation, he was going to get them all killed.

That thought was the cold truth of the matter, so when he felt Emily touching his leg, it was with reluctance that his gaze shifted over to hers.

When he did, her expression softened and she leaned closer.

"Stop feeling guilty," she whispered, hoping the others wouldn't hear them talking over the whistling wind, "you don't have to think of everything. Nobody expects that from you, except you. And we're going to get out of this, but we're going to do it by working _together_. Teamwork helps us build every profile, gets us through every case, and this situation is no different." Suddenly flashing on Morgan's mangled face, she sucked in a ragged breath. "It's just a little more personal."

Good Christ was it personal. Her eyes started to burn . . . poor Derek. One random missing persons case out of the hundreds he'd worked, and he ends up losing his eye in the most horrific way she could imagine. And the real irony was, even though they lived dangerous lives, with dangerous jobs, he wasn't even _doing_ anything DANGEROUS when it had happened! He just happened to be the one sitting in that seat, on this trip.

It could have been any one of them.

Which was why she didn't want Hotch getting sucked down into the guilt that she knew he was feeling. It was a constant with him, the worrying about their safety. Worrying that he would let them down. But none of this was his fault.

It just was.

And as she looked over at him, looking over at her, she could see him biting his lip. Then the hand that she had pressed down on his leg, was being picked up and cradled in his two larger ones. He leaned over and pressed his lips to her ear.

"I'm really glad you're here," he murmured, "you help me keep my head on straight."

They'd had two plus, _hard_ , years of professional bonding, and then six weeks ago some things had happened over the holidays that had jumped them ahead leaps and bounds in the area of personal bonding. And then after what had happened in that bar in Stafford, he couldn't deny that his level of trust in Emily, not just as a colleague, but as a true confidante, had completely solidified. So if they were going to get out of this, then he was going to need to keep her as his right hand. And he was going to have to LISTEN to the advice she gave him.

No going it alone tonight.

And he could tell from the way Emily sucked in her breath, and squeezed his fingers, that his words had touched her. And he was just about to ask (quietly) if she had any thoughts on what else he should do for JJ, when suddenly he heard a noise. It was muffled, and somewhat distant, but still . . . it seemed horribly familiar. And he could tell from the way Emily's nails dug into his palm . . . through both layers of their leather gloves . . . that she'd heard it too.

His wide eyes shot up to hers, as they heard Reid calling down worriedly from the front, "what is that?! Did you guys hear that?!" And then JJ, "hell yes, I heard that!"

She turned back to look at Hotch and Emily in the next row, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.

"Was that an animal?!"

Before Hotch could answer, the sound came again from off in the distance. That time they all scrambled to pull their weapons. Because that time there was no doubt what that sound was. It wasn't an animal. It was a person.

And that person was screaming.

* * *

 _A/N 2: Yes, it was awful to pop out Derek's eye, BUT, you didn't really think he was going to be able to use it again after a tree went through it, right? No. And like Hotch said, no trauma team on standby to even try. So Derek is down, and JJ's pregnancy, I felt in her position, it would not be in my best interest to keep that a secret from them any longer. It would have actually just been kind of dumb. So one more element in play for the story, as is Reid's concussion. It was a long 'live' chapter, but I needed that for some relationship building 'betwixt' most of the major players. Because things will get busier next time around, so you have to fit that layering stuff, in where you can :)_

 _And yes once more we ended with screaming, but this time it is of a different 'cause' ;)_

 _Thanks everyone!_


	3. Command Decisions

**Author's Note** : It's funny, this is already written, really doesn't need any proofing beyond me simply reading over the chapter for egregious typos I might have missed the first time around, and I STILL can't get a chapter reposted faster than it's been going. But as long as the Girl muse sticks around, and she's still here, we're good!

To this, again, direct continuation.

* * *

 **Command Decisions**

"Reid! Lights!" Hotch hissed. And Spencer immediately reached up to snap off the three dome lights burning overhead.

At the same time, Emily dropped her gun onto the seat and was turning to scramble over and get the Mag lights out from where she'd seen them jammed under JJ's ready bag.

She was yanking the first one out when her hand bumped into a sharp edge. That's when she remembered the list of supplies that JJ had read off.

 _Box of night vision goggles._

That had to be them.

So she snatched the whole box up and dropped them over into Hotch's lap before she went back in for the flashlights again.

Beside her she could hear Hotch tossing the Kevlar over to the others, while whispering for JJ to recline Morgan's seat and for Reid to place one of the vests over his chest.

Good . . . she thought frantically . . . because it wasn't at all safe for Derek so exposed up there. He couldn't even _duck_ , for God's sake, let alone protect himself!

And when she turned back to shove the other two flashlights into Hotch's lap, she was pleased to see the shadow of JJ already on her knees trying to get Morgan's seat latch. Behind her was Reid, slunk down in the front seat shimmying into his vest.

So Emily quickly reached back to snag flashlights for the two of them.

While she was digging them out, she heard Hotch climbing off their bench seat, and over into the second row. Two seconds later when she turned around with the last flashlight, it was clear even in the shadows, that Morgan was now laying almost horizontally and Reid was dropping that vest over him. And with Derek now taken care of (at least as best as they could do for him at the moment) Hotch passed a Mag light to JJ. She quickly handed it off to Reid, who went back to fixing the straps on his vest.

JJ started pulling on hers.

And the background to all of this "routine gear up," activity, was the continued, and blood _curdling_ , SCREECHING coming from the woods! A sound which was, not to put too fine a point on it, FREAKING Emily the fuck out! Because even though her team was moving quickly, and professionally, as they always did, still, she knew at the moment, they were WHOLLY unprepared to deal with an outside threat!

Then suddenly, just as she reached for her own vest, Emily froze. And she saw the others stopped moving at the same moment that she did. Because now there was a new sound outside their windows. And that sound was utter Silence. The screaming had stopped.

Mid-curdle, one might say.

Though Emily really didn't want to say it. Because that sound, the screaming getting choked off with a gurgle, she'd heard it before. And usually right before they found a bloodbath. And that again, fell onto the list of the things her team was _wholly_ unprepared to deal with at the moment. She slowly exhaled.

Shit!

"Hotch," she rasped out while slipping her own sheet of Kevlar around her body, "are we going out there?"

Though she already knew the answer, she still needed to ask the question. But of course in situations like this, the question was always the same. Were they going to chase the devil, or would they let him go for another day? This was the baseline morality of their work.

And it was a bitch.

Feeling not for the first time, the tremendous stress of command and these horrible decisions that he was so often forced to make, Hotch bit down hard on his lower lip.

"We have to go," he murmured back. Then his head swiveled as his eyes tried to see through the tinted glass and out into the darkness, "I'm just not sure which way."

Though it seemed like an absolutely, unequivocally, TERRIBLE idea to split up, let alone go outside, there was no way that they could ignore screaming in the woods. Screaming in the woods, that was their business.

That was their _job_.

It meant that someone was being hunted by an animal of either the two, or four legged, variety. Granted the two legged variety was generally their specialty, but tonight, dear Christ was he hoping for the four! Because any predators out there in the dark that had just two legs, if they were hunting on a night like this, they probably would know these woods well. As opposed to him and his team.

They might as well have just been dropped onto Mars.

"It was coming from there," JJ said softly while gesturing with her gun towards the right passenger side window, "I'm almost positive."

"I would have said it came from up ahead," Reid cut in, using the same quiet tone, trying to keep his words from carrying out the broken window, "but I wouldn't swear to it."

With two differing opinions . . . and him only maybe sixty percent sure that JJ was right and Reid was wrong . . . Hotch turned to look at Emily sitting behind him. Even in the darkness, her outline was visible.

He could see that she was fixing her straps.

"Prentiss," he asked softy, "any input?"

"I couldn't say really," she whispered back while yanking her bottom strap tight, "I thought it was more to the right too, but Reid's closer to the open window so he might have a better read on where it was coming from than we do. _Although_ ," her actions slowed as a thought seemed to come to her, "maybe the person was running and the first scream was from up ahead, and _then_ they went into the woods."

Hotch nodded slowly.

"Yeah, that actually makes sense. So all right," seeing her vest was in place he reached over and grabbed her wrist, "come on." He started pulling her over the seat, "you and I are going out to look around." He shifted his voice towards the front, "and you other two, watch the woods. Especially the right, because the only exit we have is on the left."

Seeing Emily had dropped on the bench next to him, he let go of her arm to continue softly giving Reid and JJ their orders.

"Once we move around the vehicle, you two switch your attention to the opposite side. And if Prentiss and I don't find anything in five minutes, we're coming back in and we're all getting the hell out of here. Because under the circumstances," he shook his head, "we're clearly _not_ equipped to run any kind of dedicated search or do any tracking." He sighed, "really, the best we can do is a scoop and run if we find somebody out there. That's it."

Though ordinarily he'd have all four of them going out, with both JJ and Reid physically compromised . . . their head injuries were not conducive to straight shooting or quick reflexes, and that wasn't even including JJ's potential for miscarriage as a twofer for her . . . it seemed much wiser for them to stay inside with Morgan. Basically, sending them out not knowing if they were up to par, would be a distraction for him.

One likely to get somebody killed.

And hearing the murmurs of "got it," and "yes, sir," with that, Hotch picked up the flashlight and a pair of the goggles that Emily had given to him. The goggles he dropped around his neck, and with one final prayer that he wasn't making a COLOSALLY bad command decision, he slid over and opened the back door.

Of course once more the broken window created a wind tunnel through the cab . . . a noisy one at that . . . so he tried to get outside as quickly as he could.

Though he was squinting in the wind and snow . . . he didn't want to try the goggles yet in case they obstructed his view . . . his eyes were still bouncing everywhere. And in one hand he had his gun, and in the other the Mag light. The beam reflected well off the clean white snow.

It was brighter still when Emily popped out next to him.

Before either of them could move to get the door, JJ had pulled it closed. And fortunately she did it quietly, because he was worried about an echo in the forest. Of course it was possible that they'd already been noticed, but either way, they didn't need to make _obvious_ targets of themselves.

And after a couple of quick gestures to Emily which translated to, _'I'll cover left, you cover right, stay close_ ,' Hotch saw her arms coming up even as she tipped her head in acknowledgement.

Seeing that she was holding both her light and her gun out straight even in the whipping wind, he nodded to himself.

 _Always know what your bullets are going to hit._

Though hopefully they wouldn't have to hit anything that night. But with them each now positioned correctly, Hotch took a few steps away from the vehicle. Then his eyes widened at what he saw across the road.

Something was moving in the trees. And that was on the _left_ side of the SUV. Not even close to where ANY of them had thought the screams were coming from.

 _Great._

"Prentiss," he hissed with his eyes still locked onto the figure in the trees, "nine o'clock."

Though he wasn't sure what the hell he was looking at, it seemed much too tall to be an animal. Maybe, he could allow for the size (well over six feet) of a bear on its hind legs, but he knew it wasn't a bear. For one thing a bear wouldn't be _hiding_ on its hind legs. If it was up, then it would have been growling or moving.

And whatever this was . . . his heart started to pound . . . it was just standing still.

Then he felt Emily's arm brushing against his right before she whispered back, "what the hell is that?!"

There was clearly tension in her voice.

But he just shook his head, still with his eyes locked onto that figure.

"Don't know," he answered softly, "but keep watching the woods around him. He might not be alone."

Then he raised his voice.

"This is the FBI!" He called out loudly, projecting as much authority into his words that he could, under circumstances where he basically had none at all, "whoever is over in the trees, raise your arms above your head, and step out into the open!"

Pause for human reaction time . . . but there was no reaction at all. So he tried again.

Though this time with a lot more bite in with the bark.

"Unless you want to be SHOT where you stand," he growled, "step out into the road! NOW!"

Though it wasn't ordinarily his approach to go clichéd, Old West, ' _shoot first, ask questions later,_ ' at the moment they really had no other negotiating tactics.

And fortunately the Old West approach did seem to make an impact, thank Christ. Because it was barely two beats after he'd finished speaking that he felt Emily poke his side with her elbow.

"He's moving," she murmured.

Then a second after that, the dark outline started to walk out from behind the trees. And that figure was most definitely, _not_ any kind of wild animal. It was a man.

A very tall, very thin, very bald . . . man.

Even eyeballing him from across the four lanes of the roadway, in the glow of their flashlights, Hotch would still estimate he was close to seven feet. And so pale. Truly, his skin was a shade of white he had never seen before on anything but a corpse. Though the lack of color in his features was probably due to the fact that he had to have been FREEZING to death! Really, the man was dressed in just a white dress shirt, and a black suit. No hat, no overcoat, no gloves.

In a blinding snowstorm.

And if not for the prickles down his spine, and the pounding of his heart, Hotch might for a brief moment have considered that this man who was dressed so 'ill fittingly' for the extreme weather, could have been a kidnap victim. Perhaps one who had just escaped from his abductors.

Perhaps one who had just been screaming off in the woods.

But no, as Hotch slowly slipped the safety off his gun, he was quite sure that this man had been the screemee, not the screamer. And that was because this man had just smiled. It was a big, toothy, grin.

And his teeth were covered in blood.

"ON YOUR KNEES!" Hotch barked, "NOW!"

But the man didn't get down on his knees . . . he just kept walking towards them. He started from the tree line . . . then he reached the edge of the roadway . . . then the north bound high speed lane . . . one agonizingly slow step at a time. All while both Hotch and Emily were screaming at him to stop and hit the ground. But he just kept smiling that INSANE smile! Then finally he got too close . . . he was about to reach the center yellow line . . . and Hotch fired.

Just once.

And though he could see from the jerking of the man's shoulder, that the bullet had hit its mark . . . the upper left quadrant . . . still he didn't stop walking. He didn't even stop _smiling_!

He just kept coming.

Realizing then, that they were in a HELL of a mess(!) . . . the guy had to have been on PCP or bath salts or something . . . Hotch knew that they had to take him down. So he started shooting rapid fire.

As did Emily.

Their shots were going for center mass as they'd been trained to do, and again, it was clear from the holes forming in the white shirt, and the way the man's body twitched and jerked with each hit, that the bullets had to be ENTERING his flesh, but he wasn't bleeding. And Hotch thought it nearly impossible that he was wearing a vest under his shirt. His frame was just too God damn thin!

He was like a walking skeleton.

Though after at least thirty bullets had been pumped into him, his steps were at last, FINALLY, beginning to slow down! But not like they should have been.

Because he should have been dead.

Flat out, fucking torn up carcass on the road . . . but he wasn't.

And with him still coming, now just one lane away, and the safety of his team his only thought at the moment, Hotch finally just took the head shot. And he took it with the last two bullets in his clip.

He shot them right into the middle of the forehead.

Even with the only illumination coming from their flashlights, he could see the splatter of brain and bone fly like a mist through the swirling flakes. And though he wasn't pleased at that image . . . he'd never been happy to have to kill anyone, even the monsters they hunted . . . he was at least relieved.

For a moment anyway.

But then, as he was rapidly replacing his empty clip, he started to feel a tickle of confusion and unease, added into his general state of well, general upset. The confusion was coming in though, because as the body fell to the pavement, Hotch once again took note of the lack of blood coming from the wounds. Not just the ones in the chest now. But also, he'd literally just blown two holes through a human head, and there wasn't a speck of crimson marring that pristine white snow. There was definitely bone, and tissue . . . but no blood.

And that was not fucking possible.

Feeling his brain twisting as it searched for a scientific explanation for the unexplainable, Hotch was about to walk over and check the body more closely . . . he had to be missing something . . . when suddenly he heard another noise. It was a shriek. One of rage. Not from across the road, but from the woods behind them.

The place where all the screaming had originally come from.

Even as he spun around, Emily was doing the same.

"Round front," he muttered with an elbow bump to her side, and she immediately started hurrying around the SUV.

As they passed the front bumper, he smacked the hood to get Reid's attention. And when his youngest agent's wide eyes snapped over to his, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

The reminder . . . watch the other side of the road.

And he could tell from the quick jerk of his head, just before he twisted around, that Spencer remembered their orders.

Good.

Though when he turned back to continue after Emily, Hotch saw that she hadn't stopped when he had. She was already sinking into the snow as she stepped through drifts in front of the tree line.

Which meant that he was a good five steps behind her. And that was five steps too far.

Shit.

So he started hurrying after her, but the snow by the side of the road, it was already too deep. It was sucking down on his boots.

He was falling further behind.

A good ten steps now.

So he started to call out for her to stop and wait for him . . . but he hadn't gotten out more than the, "Pren . . ." when suddenly something hit her from the side.

She went flying through the air and disappeared into the blackness of the forest.

His eyes popped.

"PRENTISS!" He screamed, while scrambling to race through the deepening snow, "PRENTISS!"

Though he could hear her screeching and see her flashlight lying still in the snow, the sound of her voice and the location of the light, were not coming from the same location.

So he just ran towards the screeches . . . though they were getting further away.

She was being taken from him.

"EMILY!" he screamed as true panic began to consume him, "WHERE ARE YOU?!"

From behind him he could hear JJ and Reid yelling from the SUV, pleading with him to let them know what was happening. But before he could yell for them to stay where they were . . . he couldn't have them all scattered out in the forest, his entire team would be dead by morning . . . his light hit the marks in the snow.

Drag marks.

So he started running after them. The flashlight bouncing through the falling flakes, as the blood pounded in his ears. Though he'd allow it wasn't possible to run at his optimal speed at that moment . . . the tree cover was dense, and the snow covered ground slippery and uneven . . . he couldn't believe it was possible for her to be taken so far, so quickly. But she was completely gone from his sight! He'd even tried the goggles but there wasn't enough ambient light under the trees for them do anything.

So he shoved them into his pocket as he tried to push down the terror and panic washing over him. But that was nearly impossible to do. Because the minutes were ticking by as her cries faded further and further away from him. Still though, he wasn't letting her go.

Not a chance in hell.

So his boots were pounding down over and over into the snow. And he knew from his lost breath, and the seconds he was counting away, that he had to have gone at least a quarter mile, zigzagging through the trees. And he was going fast, but he could hardly hear her anymore.

It was a few minutes later, after tripping over something under the snow, that he saw Emily's ski cap had gotten snarled up on a root sticking out of a drift. His stomach twisted.

It had to have come off when she was being dragged.

It was at that moment, when Hotch realized that he hadn't heard her cries for at least thirty seconds.

Maybe even longer.

And feeling a new wave of terror washing over him, that she might have been knocked out, or God help him . . . worse, he screamed for her again.

"PRENTISS! YOU HAVE TO KEEP YELLING!" he threw his arm up to knock a branch out of his way, "IT'S THE ONLY WAY I CAN FIND YOU!"

But there was no response. Either she was now too far away to even hear him, or she was no longer physically able to respond.

Either scenario made his blood run cold.

And he was about to scream her name again, because fuck if he couldn't just let her just DISAPPEAR into the God damn ether(!) . . . when he heard a shot far, far, off in the distance. And then there was another one . . . and another . . . and another.

A full clip was emptied.

It took almost a minute, but as he ran he'd been counting the shots. That was definitely fifteen. Emily's whole spare clip.

But he didn't know if she was the one who was firing.

And though his heart was now in his throat, and his lungs were screaming at the icy air he'd been forcing into them, somehow he found a new burst of strength.

Or maybe it was just the new surge of adrenaline.

Absolute terror will do something for a man. It can make him run faster. Slipping and sliding through the snow, racing to get to the sound of those gunshots. Trying to get to her.

Another thirty paces covered.

Another forty.

Fifty-five.

Eighty-seven.

It was literally all he could do to keep his sanity, count the steps in his head, and scream her name out loud. Over and over. Emily . . . Emily.

Emily.

But there was no response. And no more gunfire. But then as he hit the one hundred and tenth step, finally, up ahead, his light bounced off a figure on the ground. But it wasn't just one figure.

There were three.

It was hard to tell if they were men or women. But they were all wearing ski jackets, and all lying flat on their backs.

And they all appeared to have had their throats ripped out.

There was blood, well, Christ, it was splattered everywhere. And it was all soul deadeningly fresh.

OH JESUS!

As he raced towards the bodies, he was pleading with a God that he'd long ago stopped praying to, that Emily wasn't in that small pile of corpses.

"I'm over here."

The words came in a soft, raspy voice, but fortunately Hotch somehow still heard them. And he stopped short, spinning away from the bodies, to turn around in disbelief.

"Prentiss?" He cautiously, and quietly, called out into the trees, "is that you?"

"Yeah," she coughed, "it's me," she threw a stick at his feet, "to your right."

So he turned, rushing over as he waved his light further into the darkness surrounding him.

It took a second, but then finally, he found her crouched over, leaning against a tree. She was shaking as she sucked in what he could only describe as raggedy, panicked, breaths. He could also her gun was being held tight in one hand, and that her gloved fingers were just dangling into the snow, from the other arm.

And fortunately, with the exception of a reddish discoloration of her cheek . . . which was likely just an ice burn caused by her skin scraping on the snow . . . she didn't appear to have suffered any other physical injuries during her abduction.

Thank Christ!

Though when she looked up at him, and their eyes locked, he could see that hers were wild . . . but of course his probably were as well. But that was because truly, those last fifteen minutes running through the forest, had been the worst of his life. Next to Reid's abduction, chasing her trail through the snow, was as terrified as he'd ever been.

On the job or off.

But now that he'd found her again, there was something that could be done about that terror. Something that Reid had once done for him.

And it was something that he could do for both himself and Emily now.

So when she started to slowly push herself to her feet, he reached out with his flashlight arm, to pull her up. Once she was standing, though still shaking, and he knew that wasn't just from the cold, he did something he never allowed himself to do.

Pull her into an embrace.

The hug was hard and tight, and as close as he'd held her that night in the bar. But it still wasn't close enough.

So he tipped his head down.

"I thought I'd lost you," he panted in her ear. And then he felt her nod slowly against his chest. "Yeah," she chattered back as the gloved fingers of her free hand clenched in his jacket, "I thought I'd lost me too."

Then she tipped her head back, and once again her eyes were locked onto his. Even with the light bouncing up from the snow, he could see that they were less wild now, but no less terrified.

"There were two of them," she whispered frantically, "and I shot them both. And I think they're dead, but I don't know for sure, because they were just like that guy in the road. They weren't bleeding, and they just kept moving. So I just kept shooting them, and then I ran," her eyes started to water, "and I ran, and I would have kept going but I saw those bodies, and I had to stop," she bit down on her lip, "I had to check them," she cleared her throat, "but they were all dead. Then I heard you calling my name again. At least I thought it was you," she blinked as her eyes darted into the darkness around them, "but I wasn't sure until I saw you in the light, so I hid until then." Then she pulled her hand off his hip, and raised her gun up between them.

"Because I don't have any bullets left."

It was just a miracle she hadn't lost her gun when she'd lost her flashlight. Amazingly, they didn't even try to take it away from her. I was almost like they weren't afraid of it. But then once they started dragging her, she just kept hold of it for dear life.

Literally.

"All right, here," Hotch held out the flashlight, "hold this."

After she'd taken the light, still holding the beam straight to the ground as he had, he bent down and pulled his Glock out from his ankle holster.

As he was straightening up, Emily was shoving her Sig into her side holster. And after she took the revolver from his hand, she started to pass him back the light, but then he put his finger up.

"Wait."

Then he quickly shoved his sig into his pocket to free his hands, before reaching up to yank off his ski cap. He pulled it down over Emily's head.

As he was fixing it over her ears, he could tell from the look on her face . . . a mixture of gratitude and exasperation . . . that she was about to protest, but he just shook his head.

"Not a point for discussion," he stated quietly while pulling his gun back out, "you've lost too much body heat already, and I don't know how long it's going to take us to get back to the SUV. Speaking of back though," he took the light from her hand, "where did you leave those men?"

She jerked her chin to the left.

"That way. Maybe a half mile. And they each have at least a half dozen rounds in them. But Hotch," she shook her head violently, "I don't want to go back there. I know that we should, but I can't. There's something wrong here, and I don't know what it is, but we need to go."

"No, no," Hotch's brow darkened slightly, "I wasn't going to suggest we go after them. We clearly don't have the weaponry, not to mention," he stomped his foot down in the snow, "this is just going to get deeper. And if we let it get too deep, it's going to cover over your drag marks and my footprints. And then we're never getting out of here. I just wanted to know which way we have to watch for a likely ambush. So," he tipped his head, "come on. And you stay RIGHT beside me, okay?"

"Yeah," she gave a sharp nod as they started walking, "not a problem. Because I don't know if I have the energy for another round of fight or flight. If they hadn't stopped for a second, and I still don't know why the hell they did because I was practically floating off the ground they were pulling me so fast, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to take the first shot." She bit down on her cheek, "I wish I'd been able to do that sooner, but when they first knocked me down, for a few seconds I was so stunned I couldn't even react."

"Yeah," he shook his head, "you'd completely disappeared almost a split second after I saw you get hit."

The speed that these men could move was truly, remarkable. Again, especially given the lack of winter gear!

How were they not just DYING of hypothermia?!

"It's weird isn't it?" Emily murmured.

"What?" Hotch's gaze briefly flicked down to her face as they hurried around a stand of pine trees, "what's weird?"

"The no blood thing," she answered softly, "and their clothes. Oh yeah," her voice started to get tight, "I forgot to tell you. The ones who grabbed me were dressed like the other guy. Dark suits. No coat, no gloves. And really, really tall and really, really pale. It's almost like . . ."

And then she trailed off, because suddenly, walking there out in the pitch black, and freezing cold, her stupid little supposition, didn't seem so stupid.

It just seemed like a really bad idea to say it out loud.

But then Hotch prompted her.

"What is it almost like?" He whispered, "What are you thinking?"

For a second though, still, she paused before responding. Because the idea was so ridiculous, that she didn't want Hotch to think she was literally, cracking up. But then she just thought, 'fuck it,' because as long as she was clear that she wasn't saying that's they _were_ , that it was just what they _reminded_ her of, then he wouldn't think she was a nutjob.

So she finished her thought.

"They remind me of, well, vampires," she answered with a faint bit of hesitation. "You know, like the description in old stories. Unnaturally tall, pale skin, and the reason they don't bleed is because their hearts aren't beating. And then the way that they kill, ripping open the throats." She bit her lip, "given the blood we saw in the first guy's mouth, they're probably doing that with their teeth. You know . . . like a vampire would."

And it was seriously creeping her the fuck OUT! Although not quite so much as when she heard Hotch agreeing with her. Actually she was so shocked when he actually said, "they probably are vampires," that she stopped short in the middle of the woods.

"What?!" She hissed, "you _actually_ think they're REAL vampires!?"

Was he fucking kidding her with this shit? How was she EVER going to sleep again?!

But then she saw Hotch turn back to her, his eyebrow inching up in confusion.

"Of course I don't think they're real vampires." He responded slowly, "there's no such thing. I just meant that has to be their chosen mythology," he shook his head, "it's got to be a cult of some kind and the vampire is just the creature they're choosing to emulate while they hunt and kill."

"Oh," she let out a breath, "okay, that's better. Because if you, of _all_ people, was going to tell me that he believed in vampires then, well," she shook her head, "I'm all done here."

Seeing Hotch's mouth quiver ever so slightly, Emily impulsively reached out to pat his chest. Then she started walking again.

"I still don't understand the lack of blood though," she continued as he fell back in step beside her, "because I did actually check one of them before I ran and," she shook her head, "when I ripped open his shirt there was no vest. Just a chalky white chest with a bunch of really big holes in it." Her lips pursed, "it was like I'd shot a mannequin or something."

It was almost, in a way, MORE disconcerting than seeing a 'regular' dead body. Not that regular dead bodies weren't upsetting by themselves . . . even after all this time, they still made an impression . . . but seeing just a bullet hole with no blood, that somatic response to massive trauma was so strange and alien to everything she knew, that her brain couldn't process it.

She had no box for such a thing.

"It is very strange," Hotch waved the flashlight a little further ahead of them, "but I'm sure there's some physiological reasoning for it. Perhaps a clotting disease, or something along those lines. Whenever we get back to civilization, we'll have Garcia research it and we'll figure it out, but for now," he tipped his head, "let's just keep moving. I'm worried about Morgan. We have to get him to the hospital before he wakes up," then his voice faded slightly, "because I don't know what the hell we're going to tell him if we're still out here."

Christ, he didn't know what the hell he was going to tell him even if they _did_ , by some fucking MIRACLE, get to the hospital before he woke up! Because it was still going to be his responsibility to handle the conversation. _After all_ , he thought with a flip of his stomach, _he was the one that had ripped his eye out of his head._

So there was no way for that pronouncement to go well.

But then he felt Emily slip her arm through his. And when he turned his head slightly to look down at him, she leaned her head against his bicep.

The action caused a softening of his expression, and for the beam of light to jostle over the freshly falling snow.

"I'll be there when you tell him," Emily said with a husky whisper, "whether it's out here in the middle of nowhere, or in some nice sterile hospital room. We'll do it together."

Though she knew that Hotch felt responsible for what had happened, he wasn't. And that conversation with Morgan was going to be hell, so she would never allow him to take such a burden on all alone. It was too much to ask of anyone to handle by himself. Even Hotch.

Especially Hotch, really.

He already had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

But she also knew, as well as she knew her own name, that Hotch wanted to tell her that she didn't have to be there, fortunately he seemed to know better than to argue that point. Instead he just took in a slow breath, and then she heard him breathe out one word.

"Thanks."

In response she just gave his arm a squeeze. And though Emily was aware that she could probably let him go about then, she was actually, truly, FREEZING! Her body was shaking and her teeth were chattering, and even with both boots and gloves, her fingers and toes were starting to get numb. And though the level of physical contact she currently had with Hotch was limited to her side being pressed against his side, there was body warmth there. Enough to take a bit of the chill off . . . and every little bit helped.

So she stayed where she was.

Either way, Hotch didn't seem to mind. And yes, given that they were likely being hunted through the forest by some band of sociopathic fruitloops who worshiped at the altar of Anne Rice, it was a little strange to be clinging to his side like they were a couple of civilians or something. But well, fuck it. It was just too cold, and the hike was going to be a long one.

Probably close to another mile to go.

They were moving at a decent clip, but she'd been dragged in pretty far, and it was just too freaking cold to run flat out back to the road. Sucking snowflakes into your lungs, did not feel good. It actually hurt like a bitch. Yes, granted, the trees did provide some measure of protection from the worst of the wind gusts, but the wind was still blowing.

And that was also as cold as witch's teat, too.

So they trudged along at double speed step after step, half listening, and definitely fully watching, for the ambush that hadn't yet come. So maybe they really were dead. And maybe their whole little sick, fucked up vampire cult, only consisted of three assholes running around out in the snow.

And maybe Miss Piggy would go flying by in a few minutes.

But as long as the others, and yes, she was sure there were others . . . there was no way only three of them would have been out hunting in a storm like this all alone . . . didn't find their dead friends until after she and her team had reached something passing for authority out here, that would be freaking great.

Fanfuckingtasking really.

And that thought, that _wish_ , was the mantra that kept her going as she slipped and slid through the powdery white forest. A forest which really was becoming even whiter by the second. And when she saw that in some places, their tracks had already been covered over by the blowing snow, Emily could feel her tension level rising even higher still.

Hotch must have sensed it. Or maybe he just wanted to reassure himself as well. But either way, he did point out, with a murmured whisper, that there was still enough of a path left to keep following along. And as long as they had some evidence of trampled snow, they'd be fine.

It couldn't be much farther anyway.

Which was true, at that point it shouldn't have been much farther. Because Hotch had just gestured to her ski hat lying on the ground, half covered in snow. And though she did snag it up with the tip of the Glock, it was sopping wet.

And freezing cold.

Which obviously meant that it was no good for Hotch to put on right then. And when she'd offered, twice, to give him back his own hat, he'd refused both times. But she knew that he was losing too much heat, and she was worried about hypothermia.

Really, she'd just be thrilled when they got back to the SUV.

Because there, they had warm, dry clothes and shelter from this God awful storm. Though it did occur to her that once they did get out of this wintery hell, by the time they came back to the area with reinforcements (if they could find the area again), the path from their tracks would be long gone. And at that point, even with cadaver dogs, with the freezing temperatures, it would be near impossible to find those bodies she'd stumbled over in the woods. But that was another thought she kept to herself.

It was another discussion that could wait until they were back out in civilization.

For now . . . she rubbed her nose against Hotch's jacket . . . it was just noise in her head. Speaking of noise, she'd just noticed that the sound of the wind was getting louder, and she was pretty sure that meant they were getting close to the road.

The wind had been HOWLING out there.

"Look," Hotch squinted into the snow while waving the flashlight beam against the trees, "I think I can see the headlights from the SUV through there."

So with that now, please God, being their last push, they tried to sprint along the last, fading outline of their earlier steps. And a minute later, when they did break through the trees, nearly tripping and falling over the brush that had now been covered over completely in snow, Emily nearly whooped with joy.

FINALLY!

And with Hotch at that point basically just pulling her along, they made their way over the snow drifts, and around the front of the SUV. It wasn't until then that Emily realized that they'd just wandered out of one hell, and straight back into another.

Because as they came around to the driver's side of the vehicle, she saw that both the front and back doors were standing wide open. But when they rushed to look inside, the others were nowhere to be found.

And as they stood there by the open doors, with the fine layer of snow blowing in on the seats, Emily's panicked eyes snapped up to Hotch's. For a moment he looked too stunned to even speak. But then he seemed to see something over her shoulder. And hearing his breathless, "oh Jesus," at whatever was back there, she spun around.

And seeing then what he'd seen a split second before, Emily's eyes began to fill. Because there on the ground, half under the back bumper, and half covered over by the drifting snow . . . was Morgan.

He was face down on the ground, and the snow all around his head, it was bright red.

There was blood everywhere.

* * *

 _A/N 2: That was a long time to leave the others alone in the SUV with a maybe not dead vampire lying in the road next to them. Especially when they didn't know that he wasn't maybe not dead. And poor Morgan, AGAIN! I know. But we're going places here, we haven't been before. Please trust me :)_

 _And yes, shippers, I promised you'd get some stuff, you're getting some stuff._

 _As to the vampires, I've already said no sparkles here, but to be clear I think vampires should be SCARY, not at all 'pretty.' Think Nosferatu type old worlder. I mean, it's an undead creature that wants to suck the blood out of your body. How that was ever deemed to be 'romantic' is truly beyond me. But whatever, just to be clear, creepy dudes here. I'm actually using the "Gentlemen" from Buffy sort of as my mental inspiration. Not exactly like them, because they were more Victorian story book monsters and, not vampires at all, but that level of crazy ass insanity in a nice button down suit. I think it fit well with the idea of it being SK's Salem, which was taken over decades back (per the events in his book) and the vampires are in a time warp._

 _Thanks everyone!_


	4. Dead Soldiers

**Author's Note:** Thank you again everyone for the kind notes!

Once more, direct continuation.

* * *

 **Dead Soldiers**

Emily bounded forward, racing over the five steps to where Derek was laying on the ground . . . she dropped to her knees.

"Oh God, Derek," she whimpered as her hand fell to his back, "please don't be dead!"

And then Hotch was down there beside her, helping her turn him over. And what was clear then, caused Emily to shriek with rage. Because Derek's one good eye was staring up, lifeless. And the left side of his throat had been ripped open.

It looked like it had been chewed on.

"MOTHERFUCKERS!" She screamed as her hot tears spilled over, burning her icy skin. And when she fell, now sobbing with grief and rage, over Derek's body, she felt Hotch's hand immediately drop to her side. And then his arms were sliding around her waist, and pulling her back to his chest.

"Emily," his voice was raspy and grief filled, "come on," he tugged her up with him, "you're going to get blood on you."

Those words sounded inane even to Hotch's own ears, but he couldn't leave her down there weeping over Derek's dead body.

The sight of it was killing him.

"He couldn't even defend himself!" Emily sobbed back as Hotch pulled her to his chest. "He was hurt and I wasn't here to PROTECT him!"

For almost three years, he'd been her partner. He'd always had her back. And now today when he'd needed her to be there for him . . . she bit down another sob . . . he'd died lying in the road. All alone.

 _Alone._

Her brain stumbled over the word and her head snapped up.

"Wait," she sniffled while scrubbing her gloved hand under her nose, "why is he alone out here?" She whipped her head around.

"Where are JJ and Spencer?!"

Seeing Derek's bloodied body had momentarily wiped that first mystery from her brain. But it had just come roaring back again.

 _What the freaking HELL had happened while they were gone?!_

"I don't know," Hotch murmured back. Then she saw him wince as she felt his hand slid down from her shoulder, just before his arms fell to his side.

"I have no idea what happened out here."

His last words were a whisper. And realizing then that Hotch's reaction to Derek's death was, though outwardly more subdued, of course no less devastated than her own, Emily felt a wave of shame.

He bottled things up so well, it was easy to forget how deeply he cared. And how deeply he _felt_ things. And Derek had been Hotch's friend, for years before he'd been hers. This wasn't just the loss of a friend for him, though. This was his team.

Their lives had been entrusted to him.

And if JJ and Reid were dead too . . . she swallowed . . . if they'd all been murdered on his watch, on a case that he had chosen, Hotch wasn't coming back from that. Not a chance.

Even now she could see him fading.

That strength and confidence that he normally exuded like the air that he breathed, it was gone. His jaw was slack, and his eyes were watering as he stared over her shoulder and down to Derek's dead body. And though Hotch had shared his tears with her just a few short weeks ago, this reaction from him now, she could see that this was different. This was more than the sadness and loss that she'd seen in him before. This was also grief and guilt, and . . . another tear slipped down Emily's cheek . . . devastation. That's what this was.

Complete devastation.

And she couldn't have that. Not only would it actually be their death knell . . . they still needed to get out of this nightmare, somehow . . . but she couldn't have him suffering that way. Not over these things that he couldn't have anticipated, let alone have EVER hoped to control once they were set in motion.

So with the snow whipping around them, and the temperature still dropping, she stepped forward again, and reached up to slip her arms around his neck. Then she pulled him close.

"Stop blaming yourself for this," she rasped in his ear, "you didn't break protocol. We were in an accident, and we were attacked," her voice started to waver, "but you got me back. And they should have been FINE on their own. When we stepped outside, they were alert and they had their guns, and the shotguns, and all of the extra ammo. Even if someone did come at them, even if a God damn ARMY had come at them, they should have been able to fend off an attack for . . ." her voice faded, "hours."

"Hotch," she continued slowly while leaned back to look up at him . . . his eyes were still watering, "why didn't they fight?" Her gaze shifted over to the SUV.

"There's not one bullet hole that I can see on this side."

She let go of him to run around and check the back.

"And there's nothing here either," she called out.

A split second later, Emily's head snapped up when she saw Hotch coming around the corner.

He was pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Why _wouldn't_ they fight?" She continued, feeling her utter confusion in reading the scene, momentarily overriding her grief. "You said that you heard my shots, so you definitely would have heard theirs too. Hell," she smacked her palm against her forehead, " _I_ would have heard them. And there's no blood out here except for," she blinked away the fresh tears trying to form, "Morgan's."

Hotch turned slightly, his eyes dropping down to once more take in Derek's wounds. For a second he just stared at them, imprinting the terrible images, then his gaze shifted to the bloody snow surrounding Derek's head. And that's where Hotch finally blinked away the last of his icy tears.

Grief was an indulgence that he could not afford. Not if he hoped to get any of his people home alive. And Emily's words had created an unexpected tickle in his brain.

It was hope.

His eyes snapped back up to hers.

"Do you think that they could have left here on their own?" He asked slowly, trying to pull his brain up out of the darkness that it had been sinking into, "that maybe they're hiding somewhere?"

"I don't know," she pressed lightly on his chest to guide him back around the SUV, "but maybe there's something inside that will tell us where they are."

God _please_ , let there be some clue inside! Because she was NOT emotionally equipped to deal with the murders of THREE of her closest friends in the span of an evening! And again, of course Hotch wasn't either. But she seriously did not know what the hell they were going to do if they really were the last two left alive out there. But without any bodies, and the storm was getting worse by the second . . . if not a full blown blizzard, it was damn close to it . . . there was no way that they could be sure of what had happened to the others. So how could they just drive off and leave them to an unknown fate?

They couldn't.

Never.

And as Hotch leaned in through the front door of the Suburban, and she leaned in through the back, Emily was praying to all the deities out there, that there would be some sign of what had gone on in their absence. And actually . . . her eyes widened . . . there was something.

"The shotgun case is open on the backseat," she murmured, "one's missing, and a box of shells is open. The cardboard's torn." Then she took a step up and peered over the seats, "but for what I can see, nothing else looks any different back here than when we left."

"Well," Hotch leaned over to look in the passenger side foot well, "there's nothing up here except Derek's blanket." He pulled back out and shut the driver's side door. Then he gave a furtive look around into the blowing snow before poking his head into the back door.

"How many shells are left?"

"Hold on," Emily quickly dumped out the open box to let the shells fall into her lap, "looks like um," she poked her finger around to do a quick count, "twenty." She looked up at him, "and JJ said the boxes were full and the shotguns were empty, but these are seven shell capacity shotguns. So whoever loaded the missing one," she bit down on her lip, "didn't even take the time to fully load up."

Which really was bizarre on its own, and that was after a series of nothing BUT bizarre decisions!

First it was ludicrous that JJ and Spencer would have run off and deliberately left Morgan alone while he was alive. Yet . . . Emily's stomach twisted . . . there really was no other way for him to have been taken from the vehicle. The others certainly wouldn't have allowed that to happen if they were still there when he was attacked. So presuming that they _had_ chosen to leave him alone for some INSANELY good reason which was escaping Emily at the moment, then why the hell wouldn't they have at least properly loaded up the ONE extra weapon that they'd taken with them? Granted, Reid wasn't the best shot on the range, but he was certainly a _professional_! He knew how to properly handle all of the weapons that they used. And there was no questioning JJ's firearms ability.

Not since she'd taken that shot through the bullpen glass.

So why wouldn't they have _both_ grabbed a shotgun? Or at least jammed the remaining loose shells into their pockets, if they were in that much of a panic to leave? Really, NOTHING about this scene that they'd left for them made ANY sense at all! And looking over to see Hotch scrubbing his hand across his mouth, Emily seriously doubted that he had any better ideas about what had gone on there, than she did.

Then he pointed down at the remaining two shotguns.

"Load them both up." He turned to look over his shoulder, squinting as the icy wind hit his face dead on, "I'll watch the perimeter." Then he turned back, "I know we're completely out of our depth here, and that procedure and basic common sense says to just go get help and bring it back to start a proper search ASAP, but," he shook his head, "I can't do that. I want to at least check the woods first before we go. But I'm not going back in there," his jaw clenched, "until we're armed to the teeth."

After already getting ambushed, TWICE, choosing to stay and conduct this search on their own was probably the STUPIDEST command decision he'd ever made. One that could easily get both him and Emily killed. And this was after his LAST command decision had ended in Derek's murder.

But still, in his gut, he just couldn't drive way without checking for the others first.

If they were close by, they would have heard Emily screaming over Derek's body, so if they were anywhere, and mobile, it had to be some distance off. Which was yet another bullet in the ' _it's time to leave and get help_ ,' column.

But they weren't going anywhere.

"Right," Emily nodded before shifting her attention back to the loose shells she'd already dumped out. With twenty left, that was obviously more than she needed to quickly load up the first shotgun.

Then she leaned forward, while calling out softly, "Hotch, take this."

When he poked his head back inside, she handed him the weapon. Fortunately they had straps on them, so he just slung it over his shoulder.

And with him now a little better armed and gesturing that he was going to walk around the SUV, Emily went back to the task of loading up the other shotgun. Once that was done, she leaned over the seat to dig out the remaining boxes of shells from where she'd last seen them.

Fortunately both of those tasks together took little more than a minute, and then she was climbing over into the back row again to start hauling their ready bags over and down to the front.

Though Hotch hadn't mentioned it, she knew that they'd need all the extra ammo that everyone had been carrying.

So one by one, she began quickly digging into their bags, pulling out the clips and pouches, and throwing them into the now empty shotgun case.

The stack of ammunition was piling up.

But then she got to Derek's bag. It was the second to last, and when she opened it up, the smell of his aftershave immediately hit her olfactory senses.

Her eyes started to water again.

There was no time for that though, so she blinked away the tears and with a deep breath, forced herself to dig down through his clothes to get to the bottom of his bag where the extra clips would be. Fortunately he had some of them on double pouches, so she slipped one of them onto her belt. Then she saw his thigh holster sticking out from under his shaving kit, so she strapped that on too.

Given that the Sig was her primary weapon, it would be better if she could keep that in her hand and the Glock on her leg.

Then the shotgun on her shoulder.

Really . . . her jaw clenched as she zipped his bag back up and moved over to begin digging into Hotch's . . . her rage level was high.

She was ready to spill some blood.

Though a moment later, when she unexpectedly came across something tucked into an outside pocket of that last duffel, her expression instantly softened again. She pulled out the knit item, and again called Hotch to the door.

When he poked his head inside, she leaned over and pulled the hat down over it.

"Saw you had a spare," she said softly while tucking in his ears, "and you need to stay warm."

Hotch bit down on his lip.

"Thanks," he murmured back. Then he jerked his chin towards the holster she now had on her thigh, "that was good you found that. Was it Derek's?"

"Yeah," her gaze fell down to the gun, "yeah, it's his." Then she looked up and nodded, "seems right though, doesn't it? I mean that I wear it to find them."

"Yeah," Hotch swallowed hard as he tried to blink away the new tears forming . . . she'd said, _"find_ " not _"look"_ . . . "yeah it is right." Then he took a breath, and turned to look over his shoulder.

Another blast of snow hit him in the face.

"I need more clips," he called over the wind as he turned to Emily again. But then he saw that she was already holding out four clips in one hand, plus almost a half dozen shells in the other.

"Two each for the Glock and the Sig, and these," she lightly shook her other overloaded hand, "should cover you for now with the shotgun."

After Hotch had slid the Glock pouch onto his belt, he shoved everything else into his jean and jacket pockets. Then his gaze slowly shifted back over to hers.

"I should get Morgan's guns too," he said softly.

It hadn't occurred to him until he saw the holster on Emily's leg, but Morgan was carrying two Glocks, and he didn't need those guns anymore.

And they needed all the weapons they could get.

"No, I'll do it," Emily's eyes started to water again as she leaned forward, "I'll get them."

Again, he was her partner. He was her responsibility.

At least until they got home.

So Hotch stepped back to let her out, and she blinked away the tears as she braced herself against the snow and wind, to hurry back down to their friend's body, still cooling on the side of the road.

 _How many hours would it take for his core temperature to drop down to air temperature?'_ she wondered when she stopped at his feet.

It wasn't a conscious thought, just a symptom of this God forsaken job. Always processing the scene. Always figuring out the next thing that would happen.

And all of the terrible things that had happened before.

And some part of her brain did know how to do that math, how to calculate that number, but no part of her was capable of doing it at that moment.

Not for him.

So she tried to push off that horribly morbid thought as she took a breath and leaned down to push back Derek's jacket. Still, even though they had no time to spare, for a second she hesitated.

Because it felt wrong taking his guns away from him.

Worse even than the foolish notion that they were leaving him defenseless . . . they'd already done that . . . but now they were actually _stripping_ the dead. Taking what little he had left in the world.

That was a moral violation.

That thought froze her for another moment, but then she felt Hotch's hand fall to her shoulder . . . she jumped. That at least broke the freeze on her body.

"I've got it," she murmured while leaning over to pull the gun and holster off his hip.

She transferred them to her own.

Then she reached down again, that time to pull his spare Glock from down by his ankle.

When she turned around with that in hand, she passed Hotch back his spare revolver, which she had tucked into her belt. He quickly returned it to his own ankle holster. And though Emily was planning on keeping the last spare gun for herself (that would give her one Sig Sauer, and two Glocks), after gnawing on her lip for a moment, she handed that Glock to Hotch too.

"You're more likely to be shooting first," she said by way of explanation as he took it from her hand, "so better you carry it than me."

If Hotch got down to pulling a THIRD handgun, just to keep firing, it was going to be a true and rare world of shit that they'd have fallen into.

One that they'd be unlikely to survive.

"Thanks," Hotch answered softly while quickly checking the safety, before tucking that last gun under his jacket and into his belt.

It was true that he was more likely to be shooting first. But that was because he always kept the others behind him.

At least as much as he could.

And with the matter of weapons collection now completed, he stepped back to let Emily walk past him.

"Are you done gathering the ammo?" He asked while leaning down to speak into her ear . . . the only way to be heard over the wind.

She shrugged half a shoulder.

"Basically." She answered in the same tone, while stopping in front of the open door, "But I was just thinking I'd grab a couple of evidence bags, and throw the cartridges into them. Obviously they should all still fire even if the snow gets them wet, but ideally we can just keep them dry, that would probably be better."

All of the cartridges were designed with sealants on them, but still, if the ONLY thing in the world keeping them alive out there were working handguns, why risk anything getting fucked up if you didn't have to?

Exactly.

And she could tell from the quick nod that Hotch gave her, that he agreed as well.

"Good idea," his jaw clenched, "break up whatever's left as evenly as you can so we can each get a bag. With the weapons we're already carrying, it'll be heavy, but given how quickly they grabbed you, I'd prefer to keep all of the ammo with us if possible."

The last thing he wanted was to do was leave any of the ammunition behind. Aside from the oxygen in the air, so far that was literally all that had kept him and Emily alive that night. So if they had to stay there another couple minutes to get it all bagged up, well, then that's what they'd do. Because it would be a God damn fucking MIRACLE, if they walked ten feet into the woods and just happened to 'stumble over,' JJ and Reid anyway. So if they were going on what could charitably be described as a Possible Suicide Run, they were at least going to pack for it.

"Will do," Emily nodded while stepping back inside the SUV, "give me like three minutes and I'll be ready." Then she immediately turned back to him.

"But you should come inside now," she continued with a note of concern, "this weather is horrible, and you haven't been out in it for like an hour."

Whether or not he was consciously aware, she could see that he was developing an involuntary shudder.

That was his body fighting to keep his core temperature from dropping.

"I'll be fine," Hotch answered quietly with a faint softening of his expression, "I have a hat now, remember?"

"Hotch," Emily reached over to touch his arm . . . his sleeve now was coated in snow, "please, you're obviously freezing. And even if you keep the door open, it's definitely warmer in here, than out there. And also," she gave him a knowing look, "we don't know how long we're going to be out looking for the others, something else could hold us up, and if you drop from exposure, then we're both dead."

It was a bit of a low blow . . . guilt over his concern for her . . . but it was the most effective weapon she had. One her mother had taught her decades ago. But Christ, the skin on his face was actually turning WHITE! If he wasn't so damn stubborn, he probably would have dropped his Sig into the snow by now.

It would have shivered right out of his hand.

For a second Hotch stared back at Emily, fighting the chatter that wanted to go through his jaw. Finally he bit down hard on his lower lip.

"All right." He answered with a faint nod, "I guess I should warm up for a minute."

Though they needed to get moving, if she still had one more thing to do, it _was_ asinine to not take the next ninety seconds to get out of the storm. And though he knew his will was strong, he also knew that Emily was correct in that his body might actually reach a point where the cold wasn't something he could fight psychologically. And then he'd become a burden to her.

And that was not something he could allow.

So after she'd patted his chest, and disappeared through the open door again, he did another quick walk around the SUV . . . still no sign of anything but snow . . . before hurrying back down to join her inside.

After he'd climbed in and dropped onto the bench seat, he hesitated for a moment about whether or not to close the door. Finally he said fuck it. The broken window on the passenger side was already enough wind exposure. If he couldn't see all angles anyway, he might as well warm up properly.

Once he'd pulled the door shut, he turned to see that Emily was already over in the back again, digging for the box of evidence bags.

So he took the opportunity to drop his gun onto his seat, and pull his gloves off. Then he brought his hands to his mouth, and started huffing on his fingers.

They'd lost feeling down through the second knuckle.

"Tuck them inside your jacket, against your stomach," Emily murmured as she climbed back over the seat, "your core's still warm, even if your extremities aren't."

Hotch looked at her for only a second, before he pulled his vest and jacket up, and his shirt and sweater out. Then he tucked his hand inside.

"Huh," he muttered as the feeling started to come back to his digits, "good call, Prentiss."

And after giving his left hand a few seconds to defrost, he switched to the other, and then back again. He needed to keep his left hand free to grab his gun, if needed. Also, it was most important that the fingers on that hand, the trigger one, had full dexterity again.

And while he was working on that, he saw that Emily was busy sorting the remaining cartridges and shells. She'd just pointed out to him that Reid's bag had an adjustable strap on it.

One that made it into a single strap, backpack.

It was exactly what they needed. Because once again looking around, and considering all that could be taken from them in even a short absence . . . like Morgan's life for instance, Hotch thought with a faint stab of grief and bitterness, which he quickly pushed away . . . it was best not to leave anything behind that they might need to survive. So after unloading Spencer's belongings onto the back seat, Emily began packing that small bag, like their very lives depended on it.

Which they just might.

So in went the last box of unopened shotgun shells, Reid's box of .38s (in the hopes that they'd find him to give them back), one of the big ammo bags Emily had packed for them a few minutes earlier (easier to haul that shit on your back than in your pockets), four bottles of water, the last flashlight, Hotch's night vision binoculars (his pockets were too full of ammo now to carry it), a handful of flex-cuffs (they might actually get lucky and pin one of those fuckers down), and lastly, two evidence bags stuffed full with protein bars, dried fruit, and nuts. Basically enough food to last all four of them . . . God willing there would be four of them . . . for at least two days.

As survivalist bags went, especially for those packed on the fly, it wasn't a half bad one.

When it got to the point where Emily was zipping it closed, Hotch started to reach for his gloves again. But then she picked up something she'd dropped onto the seat. One of the protein bars.

One of his.

"Open your hand." She instructed while ripping open the wrapping.

"Prentiss," he started to shake his head, "I'm not . . ."

"Neither am I," she gently cut him off, "my stomach is actually in knots and I could very well throw this up." She sighed, "but I just realized that we haven't eaten in like seven hours, and we burned off a hell of a lot of calories running through those woods. This is just fuel to keep our bodies going, so," she jerked her chin towards his hand, "open up."

When he did, she snapped the bar in half, and dropped one of the pieces into his palm.

She took a small bite from the remaining portion.

As they both began chewing, Hotch eyed Emily to see if she did indeed, look like she was about to throw up her bite. But seeing that she wasn't clutching her stomach, he figured she was probably okay. So with a few seconds left to think about their next overall plan, he started running down the list of supplies that JJ had read off.

"The two walkie talkies," he murmured around his bite, "we should take them just in case we get separated again, and I think we should get that tire iron JJ said was back there too."

"Tire iron," Emily swallowed and turned to look at him in confusion, "what for?"

Given how many guns they had, that was a strange weapon to think that they might need. But then she saw him shrug.

"I don't know, I just," he shook his head slowly, "I think we should dig it out before we go. Put it in the duffel," he swallowed his last bite, "shouldn't be more than five pounds."

And he saw her shrug an, "okay," and he was just about to open his mouth to ask for one of the leftover waters, when she leaned over to take a bottle out of his bag.

"Here," she handed it over, "we need fluids too."

Then she turned back to get one for herself. And as she was twisting the cap off of her bottle, he saw her wince and close her eyes.

"What's wrong?" He asked worriedly, " _are_ you going to throw up?"

"No, no," she shook her head, "it was just a uh, a weird thought that came to me."

Feeling his stomach start to twist, Hotch knew that he didn't want her to share that thought, but all the same, he also knew that he needed to ask. Because this was a hell that he had _driven_ them into.

It was all on him.

So he took his own breath, before putting the water bottle between his knees, and reaching over to catch Emily's fingers with his free hand.

"What's the weird thought?" He asked on an exhale.

She turned to him with a sad smile.

"That Morgan's lying dead out on the road, and here we are eating a snack. That is weird, isn't it?"

"Emily . . ."

With his own pained wince, Hotch started to cut in, but she just squeezed his fingers.

"I'm okay," her voice started to get husky, "I promise. Again, it's just fuel," she bit her lip, "but that's not something his body needs any more. All those protein bars he packed," she gestured towards his bag, and the food she hadn't dared to touch, "they're just going to sit there," her eyes started to sting, "because he's not going to have any more snacks."

For a second there was a pause, and then Emily came back softly.

"Sausage pizza, that was his favorite."

"Yeah," Hotch whispered, "yeah it was. But for years, no matter where we got it from, he'd never eat the crust. He always threw it back in the box. Used to drive Gideon crazy, so finally one day I just asked Derek, ' _why don't you eat the damn crust? Why do you always throw it back?'_ " Hotch's lip quirked up, "and he looked at me for a second, then he grinned," Hotch's eyes snapped over to Emily's, "you know that sly grin of his, and he said that he threw them back in the box, because it drove Jason up the wall. And, quote, _'dude needs to lighten the fuck up._ '"

Emily snorted, and started to laugh . . . but in the end she ended up just choking down a sob. And as she slapped her free hand over her mouth, her wet eyes snapped over to Hotch's.

"I'm sorry," her face twisted as she shook her head, "I keep trying, but," she sucked in a ragged breath, "I just can't keep it pushed down."

Usually her little boxes worked so well for her, even in tragedy . . . but not tonight.

Nothing was working tonight.

"You shouldn't have to push it down," Hotch bit back tightly, "you should be able to grieve for your friend." Then his voice faded slightly, "we both should. And we will . . . we just have to do it a little later."

He turned to look over at her, to really take in her posture, and the tension in her face.

"Are you up for this?" He asked softly, "really?"

"Yeah," she sucked in a deep breath as her brow darkened, "absolutely. I'm ready."

Though it seemed like time was spinning away from them, in reality only maybe eight minutes had passed since they'd stumbled out of the woods. Time enough for the world to change.

But not time enough for it to stop.

So they recapped the water bottles, and Emily grabbed the last three things from the storage area. Then with a little maneuvering and adjustments on their vests, they got the last two small bags of ammo (Hotch had halved the remaining big one, while Emily was busy in back) inside their jackets, and strapped against their bodies. It wasn't particularly comfortable, but the vests were tight enough for everything to stay in place. They wouldn't have to leave any of it behind.

And that was all that mattered.

And after Emily, wisely, zipped a protein bar into each of their inside jacket pockets ("just in case we lose the backpack,") they scooped up their flashlights and shotguns, stuffed a walkie talkie each in with each protein bar, and headed out into the storm again.

The wind was actually getting so bad by then, that when Hotch pushed the door open, the wind ripped it from his hand. Fortunately though, it wasn't quite strong enough to rip it off the hinges.

Not yet anyway.

It was another reminder though that this search they were about to undertake, was a foolhardy and dangerous one. Still, foolhardy or not, as Emily stepped out next to him, wincing at the snow pelting her face, he knew that they were going none the less.

He leaned over to press his lips to her ear.

"Twenty yards straight in," he whispered with a gesture directly across from them, "ten yards down, then back out here. Repeat until we've covered a full quarter square mile each side of the road, or the storm gets too bad to go on. And if we get attacked again, straight back out to the SUV, and we're leaving, got it?"

It was a fucking miracle that after two violent run-ins with this cult, so far the only injury between the two of them, was just the faint abrasion on Emily's cheek.

And that was the kind of luck that ran out quickly.

The next confrontation, it was likely that one, or both of them, would be joining Morgan in the hereafter. And though Hotch would very much like to see his friend again, today wasn't the day for it. And he could see Emily's wince as she half nodded, half shivered, before whispering back, "agreed."

It would be agony to leave without the others, but as the rule goes . . . you're no good to anyone else if you're dead.

So with that, and it now close to ten minutes since they'd last stumbled out of the forest, Hotch and Emily set off trudging across the snow swept road, and into the trees once again. As they stepped through the tree line, Hotch sent up a silent prayer.

 _God help us . . . please._

* * *

 _A/N 2: Funny writing the first draft here, there was a nice continuous urgency to them getting out of there and onto the search, and then on the first cleanup, (because I'm more focused on details then which slows down my own perception of the scene) it felt like they were just hanging out FOREVER! I'm like, Hotch needs to warm up or he's going to DIE, but does it seem ridiculous that they still haven't left!? Then I read it for final and I was like, okay, it's actually only like five minutes where they did all that crap. It just took five cumulative hours to write it :)_

 _I also liked writing the twist here of Emily's guilt over not protecting Derek, when usually it's always the men that are written as having that alpha need to protect the women. In law enforcement though, that feeling would go both ways, for both genders looking after their partners, and you hardly ever see it mentioned._

 _And yes I know, we've seen Emily wearing her own thigh holster before too. Let's say she didn't pack hers on this trip :)_

 _I did briefly consider covering Morgan's body with his blanket again, but it obviously would have just blown away with the wind. And they couldn't really put him back into the SUV, while they were still digging around and packing up. That would have been so creepy and weird climbing around his body. So that's why he's still lying in the road, though that does in principle seem rather undignified. Nothing to be done about it yet._

 _Thanks everyone! And I think I can get one more of these repost chapters up before Christmas :)_


	5. The Flesh and The Devil

**Author's Note** : Small time jump here.

* * *

 **The Flesh And The Devil**

"Ha -Hotch, I can't fa-fa-feel my fa-fa-face."

Emily's frozen stammer came with a weak tug on Hotch's arm. It was all she could manage.

At present they were in the middle of the forest, in near pitch black surroundings, far from the view of anything but pine trees and whatever nocturnal animals hadn't fled yet from the storm. She and Hotch had already done three laps up and down through these terrible woods and back out to the road again. God only knew how much time had passed since they'd started their grid search, maybe twenty minutes . . . maybe forty. But either way the weather, which had already reached a stage of "horrible" when they'd started out, had deteriorated.

Rapidly.

With the way the wind and snow were whipping now . . . enough to actually bend their gait . . . it was almost impossible to see anything BUT the snow! And as evidenced to Emily, (mostly by her frozen skin and the crystals forming in her eyes where vitreous fluid once lived in a liquid state), hypothermia was definitely becoming a true and _genuine_ concern. Hence the reason for her tugging on Hotch's arm.

She really couldn't stay out there much longer.

And she could tell from the way that Hotch's jaw was shaking as he squinted down at her in the glow of her flashlight, that he wasn't faring any better than she was. At first he didn't say anything back to her though, he just stared down as the snow caught on those long lashes of his. Finally he turned back towards the way they'd been going, to wave the beam of his Mag light.

After a few rotations, and a few more steps forward, something caught his eye. Emily wasn't sure exactly what it was, but suddenly with his flashlight hand, he reached back to loop his arm through hers. Then he started pulling her forward.

"Up ahead," he chattered out with a jerk of his chin, "that tree off to the far left."

The tree in question, Emily realized then, seemed to have a bit of natural shelter built into it. It was a pine, a tall, fat one, rapidly turning from all green to all white. But rather than being covered in branches and needles from top to bottom, all the way around, something had disrupted the growth on the far side. Maybe it was a lightning strike, or maybe it had been beavers, or maybe it was the fucking Keebler Elves, but whatever it was, it had left a nice cubby hole inside the branches and greater foliage.

And as she and Hotch trudged through the deepening snow . . . at least four inches had fallen now . . . Emily was trying to see just how big the space was. If there really was room enough for two.

But before she'd really had a chance to take it in, they'd stumbled up on it, and Hotch was pushing her inside.

He was a half a step behind her.

And amazingly enough, though the space was technically open to the elements . . . that obviously being how they'd entered . . . it was actually like a cocoon in there. Though there was a bit of a snow drift, maybe a half inch, down in around their boots, the wind really was blocked almost completely by the density of the surrounding needles. And with the wind cut off, the snow was no longer pelting them in the face.

Thank Christ!

Still though, as Emily slowly brought her arm up to cover her nose and mouth with the back of her flashlight hand, she wasn't feeling much in the way of warmth.

"I ca-can't ssstop sh-sh-shhaking."

It was another frozen stutter, though that time when it happened, she felt Hotch immediately step forward and pull her to his chest.

Then he jammed his gun into his holster, before he began frantically rubbing his arms up and down her back.

"It's okay," Hotch chattered while pressing Emily backwards another step until she was almost touching the tree trunk . . . he was trying to get her completely out of the storm, "you'll be okay. We're mostly out of the wind now, so," he sucked in a cold breath through his teeth, "we should warm up some."

They would definitely warm up some . . . but not enough to keep going with their search. They were both going to freeze to death if they tried to continue on any longer.

That was a fact.

Christ . . . he winced . . . what the HELL had he been thinking?! Yes, he'd known that it was a stupid idea to go off on their own in this weather, but at the time they'd decided to go, he'd had NO concept of just _how_ IDIOTIC an idea it truly had been! It had only taken ten minutes of being beaten in the face by the roaring winds and whipping snow to realize though that there was really no plausible chance of them ever finding any footprints in the woods. It wasn't like when Emily was taken and he'd been RIGHT there when it had happened.

That was a track he could follow.

The wind was blowing so hard now though that even their own footprints were gone almost as quickly as he turned back to look. And in the darkness, with their eyes squinted, and arms up to shield themselves from the wind and ice pellets, they weren't going to find anyone, or anything out there, if they didn't literally trip over it in the dark. Of course that had not happened yet. And the odds of it happening at all, were slim to none.

He'd made a horrible miscalculation.

Another one.

And as he felt Emily's body shaking against his, Hotch knew that the time had come for him to let go of what was left of his pride. He'd already lost Derek, and God knew his hopes now of finding JJ and Reid without outside help, had faded to almost nothing. And even then . . . he felt a pang in his chest . . . there was still a doubt that they'd find them at all. So really, the only one of his team that he had left, the only one that he had for _sure_ , was Emily. He winced.

She was the only one he could save.

But only if he got it together.

"We're going for the SUV," he rasped into her ear, "and we're leaving."

When she tipped her head back, even in the bouncing glow of their flashlights, he could see the glistening in her eyes. He didn't know if it was caused by tears, or ice. Either way the sight caused another stab of pain in his gut. In his hubris, his belief that he could somehow conduct a two person search in a strange forest, in a _blizzard_ (!), he'd been woefully irresponsible with her safety.

He'd kept her out for far too long.

In fact, with the stammer she was developing, he realized that she might already even be falling into a medical stage of hypothermia. That was not at all in implausible development . . . and really would be par for their luck that day . . . so he decided he should probably check that out.

So he asked her a basic math question.

"Can you subtract three from twenty and then five from that total?" He murmured while tucking his flashlight under his arm. And as she nodded, stuttering out, "ssseventeen then ta-twelve," he brought that now free hand up to lightly pat her cheek. First three taps on one side . . . and then the other. Then her chin and her forehead.

And back around again.

By the time he stopped, after three rounds of three taps each, he could see that there was the faintest bit of color in her skin again. It wasn't a healthy color, but it was no longer a frightening one. Before she was ghost white.

Now at least the blood was flowing again.

So he made one more circle around her face, before moving on to take the same actions on his own.

Though of course he couldn't see the color of _his_ skin, he had to assume that the total numbness was not a good sign of anything. But after a few quick rotations . . . harder slaps for himself than Emily . . . he could feel pins and needles forming.

The pain was definitely better than the nothing.

And as he winced slightly, twisting his jaw back and forth, he could see Emily doing the same.

"When we get to the SUV," Emily chattered . . . the stammer at least had been lost, thank God, "which way are we heading?"

It was important to remember that before their world had gone _completely_ to shit . . . they'd already been totally lost.

They had no idea which way help even _was_!

Hotch bit down on his lip.

"I've been thinking about that," he answered after a pause, "and I believe our best bet is to keep going the way we were before we stopped." He ground his teeth together, "I mean Christ," he waved his hand, "we were on that road for an hour, and it has to end somewhere, right?"

"Yeah," Emily jerked her head while bring the back of her hand up to rub her nose, "absolutely, it has to end somewhere that people would want to go."

Really, how the hell could it be designated as a 'detour' road, if it didn't EVENTUALLY bring them back out to civilization again!? And all they really needed _of_ civilization was a working telephone!

Or even just a cell tower.

Yes, they were traveling through the forest, but the government had built all kinds of secret crap out in the forest. This was a fact she knew not only because of her own work, but her father's as well. So some sister agency out there could easily have put up a cell tower in these woods. Most likely it would be built like a tree so that it would completely blend into the area, but really, it _could_ exist.

It could very easily exist.

So once they were back out on the road, she realized that she should start checking her phone every mile. Maybe they'd get lucky. Maybe the universe would throw them a bone. She blinked back the tears in her eyes.

Maybe.

Feeling Hotch touching her face again, Emily's eyes snapped up to his. And seeing the intensity of the look he was giving her, and knowing there were words hovering that he wanted to say, she just shook her head.

She didn't want to hear them.

"Don't you dare be sorry that we tried to find them ourselves," she rasped out with a crackle in her voice . . . one that had nothing to do with the cold, "because there was no other choice. We weren't wired any other way. I knew it was stupid, we both knew it was stupid, but we never could have left without looking for them first. And besides that, if I wasn't here with you right now, if you hadn't taken me with you, then we both know that you would _continue_ to be stupid. Because you would stay here and try to keep looking for them," her eyes started to water, "and then I would have lost you too."

When she leaned in then to pull him into another hug . . . the reminder that they were in this together, no matter how bitter the end . . . Hotch rubbed his hand down her side.

"You're right," Hotch responded on a husky whisper, "I would be staying if you weren't here." He sucked in a ragged breath, "so like I said in the SUV, it's a good thing you are. And we _will_ still find them. They're not lost to us yet. We just need to go get help now. But they're resourceful, and strong, and if we can find this bit of shelter here," he leaned back to give Emily a firm nod, "then they definitely would be able to find something too."

Of course that was assuming they still possessed the freedom, and the free will, to seek out such things as warmth and shelter.

But a man could pray.

"Absolutely," Emily sniffed, with a pat to Hotch's chest, "they're smart, they'd find something."

Assuming they were still alive of course. They could already be long dead . . . her eyes burned . . . just like Derek. But that was a truth that Hotch knew as well as she did. So the lies they were speaking now weren't for themselves.

They were for each other.

And knowing from the way that Hotch was biting his lip, that they'd made as much peace with their decision to leave as was going to be made, she gestured behind him.

"If you want to try double time back to the road, I'm game." She stomped her feet as she twisted her jaw again, "the blood's moving again now, might as well take advantage."

It would be hard, the snow was getting deep and even with their brief rest, their strength still wasn't what it was. But the sooner they left this hell, the sooner they could come back to it.

And coming back was all that mattered.

"All right," Hotch nodded anxiously while throwing a look over his shoulder . . . out into the blowing snow, "if you think you can," his eyes snapped back to hers, "we'll loop arms so we stay together."

It was going to be a hell of time getting out no matter what, but she was right. As long as the blood was moving, better to try running it if they could. So once they'd fixed their rifles back on their shoulders and Emily tightened the straps on the backpack he was carrying . . . at a good thirty pounds it was an easier load for him to lug than her . . . Hotch turned and took the three steps out of the small shelter they'd found for themselves.

A wind gust instantly hit him from the east.

It was so strong, and so unexpected after those few minute of still air, that it was actually like a punch in the face. Literally, he staggered a bit just before he felt Emily's hand fall to his lower back.

"Go, go, go!" She yelled while simultaneously pushing him forward. Then her arm was looping through his, and their flashlights were cracking into each other, and she began pulling him forward.

That only lasted a second before he got his bearings again. Then he was pulling her. But still she was matching him pace for pace, and unfortunately, stumble for stumble.

The stumbles were inevitable though, running in snow that deep.

But as it whipped and swirled around them, they kept moving. In his head Hotch was once more counting the steps, just like he had when he was chasing Emily's trail in another part of these woods.

Nine paces . . . eleven . . . Emily fell . . . back on their feet . . . eighteen paces.

Twenty one.

He tripped . . . back on their feet.

Twenty-seven . . . turn around the trees . . . thirty . . . another turn, duck the branch . . . thirty-four, and there . . . his eyes widened . . . the gap in the pines. It was coming up.

The road was just ahead.

Once more when they broke through the tree line, they were both panting and gasping, sucking in snow and ice cold air. To Hotch it felt like his lungs were going to explode.

The pain was horrendous.

And though he wanted to stop to try and catch his breath, the SUV was now almost within sight. It was a little ways back down the road . . . they had been moving further north in their search pattern . . . but it was at least visible. Well . . . he brought his arm up to shield his eyes . . . in another minute it would be visible.

So they kept running.

Though now their steps were actually a bit more of a slip and slide over the icy asphalt just beneath the layers of snow.

The outline of the SUV had just started to come into view . . . when suddenly Hotch found himself flying through the air.

Literally . . . flying. It felt like he'd been picked up and thrown.

By Godzilla.

And as he smashed face first with a muffled curse into the snow bank on the far side of the road, far back DOWN the road. . . he just missed hitting a tree . . . from the open space behind him he could hear the crack of the shotgun. One shot . . . two. He'd been completely stunned in the fall, but he was desperately trying to refocus. And then he heard screaming.

Emily.

OH JESUS! THEY WERE GOING TO TAKE HER AGAIN!

And though he was frantic to get back to his feet, to get back to where she was . . . because now she was cursing a blue streak . . . he'd had the wind knocked completely out of him.

FUCKING HELL! He couldn't even tell which way was UP let alone which way to go! He was just blindly crawling through the snow, blinking and trying to stay on track to the sounds of the fight.

Just then there was another round from the shotgun . . . and another. The adrenaline that shot through him then, along with the pure panic of not knowing what was happening, did help to clear his brain. But by the time he was able to stumble back to his feet (after falling once), Emily had fired two more times.

And some part of his brain knew there was only one shell left.

 _Please don't take her from me again!_

He was begging God as he staggered forward, half running, half limping from where he'd banged his leg on a rock when he hit the ground. And though he knew that Emily couldn't be far . . . not more than ten or fifteen yards . . . he still couldn't see anything through the snow.

It was a world of white.

"PRENTISS! PRENTISS!"

His screams were answered with three more shots . . . all rapid fire, all from a handgun that time . . . and then her yelling back, "ONE OF THEM'S COMING FOR YOU!" and he shoved his Sig into his holster and yanked his rifle from his shoulder, even as Emily began firing again.

Hotch froze. His already wild eyes were bouncing everywhere, trying to see movement in a world that was already swirling and whipping around him.

THERE!

His brain locked onto something, just before it came flying at him. He was able to get off one load from the shotgun before he was again thrown to the ground. That time it was in the form of a tackle.

SHIT!

Fortunately the backpack broke his fall. But before he could even blink, the UNSUB was on top of him. And he was strong, SO strong, with a fetid, rotted, odor coming off of him.

He smelled like death incarnate.

And then Hotch's eyes popped when he saw the teeth. They were sharp and pointy . . . and covered in blood. Just before they made contact with his nose . . . the bastard was actually trying to EAT his FUCKING FACE(!) . . . Hotch was able to smash the base of his flashlight across the other man's jaw.

It broke.

The UNSUB didn't scream though, he didn't seem to register any pain at all, he just kept trying to chomp down. That was even though the bottom half of his face was no longer lining up with the top.

It was like a broken toy where the pieces didn't fit together anymore.

And as Hotch was grunting and twisting and shoving, trying desperately to get this asshole OFF of him(!), suddenly something else came flying out of the snow.

This time it was Emily.

THANK CHRIST!

Then her boot was connecting with the UNSUB's ribs . . . which provided just enough extra force for Hotch to use his pinned shotgun to shove him away. And as he was rolling to the left, Emily was screaming, "COVER YOUR HEAD!" so he did.

And she fired that last shell from her Remington.

When his arms dropped down, his eyes popped when he saw what she'd done . . . blown the UNSUB'S head clean off.

HOLY SHIT!

"It's the only way to kill them," she rasped while frantically yanking him up, "now watch the body! See what happens!"

"Wha . . ."

The word hadn't even left Hotch's mouth, when the thing that he was watching for, happened.

The body disintegrated.

Right in front of them, it fell into a cloud of ash. One that immediately melted into the snow. His jaw dropped.

"That is not possible," he muttered in disbelief, "it isn't."

"But it _is_ , Hotch!" Emily yelled back while frantically shoving two more shells into the now empty shotgun . . . two emergency shells were better than none, "because the OTHER one did it too! But only after six nine millimeters dead center to his face and throat, ended up tearing off his head! Now come _on_ ," she hissed while pulling on his arm, "we need to get out of here before more of them show up!"

 _JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THEY NEEDED TO LEAVE!_

Though half of Hotch's brain was still splintering off, trying desperately to reconcile what he'd just seen, with what he'd always known of the world, still, Emily's words somehow filtered through that haze.

His eyes snapped down to hers.

"Right," he mumbled, "yeah. We have to go."

It wasn't until he'd actually repeated the sentiment aloud, that his brain seemed to process the urgency of the action they needed to take. A fresh surge of adrenaline shot through his body.

"We have to GO!" he repeated again, that time in a hiss as he grabbed Emily's arm.

They began to run.

* * *

 _A/N 2: Funny, I was writing this chapter and I'd already fleshed out the beginning with them having to give up the search and I'm going along, walking them back to the SUV, and I had been playing with some images in my head of how to move forward from there (I don't generally know how a scene will end even when I walk into it) and then suddenly I'm like, I'm getting bored writing this . . . cut to Hotch flying through the air. So that's my hidden writing 'technique.' If I get bored, I throw a hand grenade into the middle of the scene :)_

 _To kill the vampires, I figure in a situation where you don't KNOW they're vampires, it would just be a trial and error process. So, 'bang, bang, bang' dead center isn't working, eventually you go for the head shot, and you keep going for it because really, there are not a lot of creatures that keep going without a head. And I liked the idea of Emily figuring out how to kill them before Hotch did. A) logically, because it was actually her third physical engagement with them, she'd have more experience than him, and B) who is to say she wasn't a Slayer in a past life? :)_

 _And I thought this was a good breaking point of their 'oh shit, what is happening out here?!' and how you're 'realistically' (such as that word applies in this type of story) trying to reconcile the ridiculous with the new reality. And your brain would not be able to immediately process the ridiculous (vampires) so the reality would simply be to run away from this thing that you can't understand._

 _Thanks everybody!_


	6. Hell On Wheels

**Author's Note** : Happy New Year everyone!

Direct continuation.

* * *

 **Hell On Wheels**

Neither Hotch nor Emily spoke as their boots pounded through the snow. They were going at a full out sprint, with no concerns now about falling from the icy road beneath them.

Their feet were barely touching the ground.

But of course that was the adrenaline. There was very little left in the world that Hotch was truly afraid of, but whatever the hell these things were, men . . . or not, they scared the ever living SHIT out of him!

And he sure as CHRIST didn't want to run into them again!

Just then, through the swirling white haze, his eyes popped when he once more saw the black outline that he and Emily had been racing towards.

The SUV.

"Reload in the back," he gasped out as they closed in on it, "I'll try to get us moving! But if something else happens," he panted, "I'm going to need you on point, so hurry!"

"Got it!" Emily yelled back over the last of their pounding steps . . . they'd just arrived at the Suburban.

That's where they finally broke apart, with Hotch whipping open the driver's side door, while she was yanking open the back one. They both jumped inside and the doors simultaneously slammed shut.

Even while hearing the distinctive 'click' of Hotch hitting the locks, Emily, with her Sig in hand, was making a quick, frantic check of the back rows of the vehicle. She just needed to make sure that they had no stowaways.

Especially those of the variety that could rip their throats out.

"Clear back here!" She hollered over her shoulder.

"Good," Hotch muttered while twisting to yank off the backpack. A split second later it went flying over into the passenger seat, and fell to the floor.

That's when he took a breath, said a prayer . . . and finally turned the key he'd left sitting in the ignition a lifetime ago.

The engine sputtered once, twice, and then just when he winced and started to bite down on his lip . . . it turned over.

THANK GOD!

As the engine roared to life, he heard Emily muttering the same prayer from behind him.

"Thank you God."

"Yeah," Hotch ground his teeth as he jammed the gear shift into four wheel drive . . . they wouldn't be rolling a foot without it, "we were due for one break at least."

And with that, he tore out.

Of course with the amount of snow and ice on the ground, they didn't so much 'tear out,' as immediately go flying across the adjacent three lanes of road and then fishtail back again. But once they'd regained some traction, Hotch floored it.

It wasn't until they'd reached the fairly suicidal (under the circumstances) twenty-two miles per hour, that he felt Emily's hand on his shoulder. And then she was climbing over the console and into the passenger seat. Fortunately the back of the seat was still lying flat from when JJ had lowered Derek down earlier, so it made her shifting over a little easier.

At least she wasn't pressed completely against the dashboard.

But as soon as she dropped down, she leaned back to grab her shotgun . . . that was placed between her knees. Then she twisted, wincing slightly so she could reach the lever to snap the seat back into place. Once it was locked upright, she finally turned to Hotch.

The cold wind and snow were whipping at her face almost as badly as they had been when they were outside. But of course that was from the God damn broken window.

They still hadn't dealt with it.

"Give me whatever needs reloading." She said while hitching her seatbelt.

"Just this," Hotch answered quietly, with a blind pass of his shotgun . . . he'd had it jammed against the door.

After Emily had taken the Remington from his hand, he yanked a shell out of his jacket pocket.

"Here."

He didn't want her using up all of her ammo, on his guns.

"No," Emily pushed it back, "keep it. I've got the backpack here," she leaned down to snatch the strap, "I'll just replace it from the big bag."

That was where they'd put the bulk of the extra shells. Shells . . . she yanked open the zipper . . . that she also needed to fill her pockets with again.

They were both quiet for a moment, the only sounds that of Emily rifling through the bag of ammo, and the wind bellowing loudly through the open window. But then Hotch heard a sad murmur from the other side of the SUV.

"We left Derek."

And he nodded slowly.

"I know." He whispered back, "I know. But it couldn't be helped. We'll get him later." His eyes briefly flickered over to Emily's and then back out the front window.

"I promise."

Even if was just his body, it was a terrible thing leaving a man behind. But they couldn't have stayed to take him. They would have been ambushed again.

Hotch was sure of it.

What he _wasn't_ sure of, was what the hell those things were! If they were human or if they were . . . and his brain started to short out.

No, no, no, no! That was not a mental road he was ready to walk down. Not yet. For now it was just enough to know that they were fast and strong, and VERY hard to kill. Head shots first, he reminded himself.

Actually head shots _only_.

They couldn't afford to waste any ammo that wouldn't actually save their lives. Though as he heard Emily zipping the backpack closed again, another thought came to him.

"Do you really think only a headshot will kill them?" He asked with another flickering glance.

"I don't think it's necessarily the shot," Emily responded slowly, "but more taking the head off completely. Because remember the first one we encountered, you shot it twice in the head, but it didn't disintegrate. And I think now that was because most of the head was still attached to the body."

She looked over at him.

"I don't think you killed it. I think it was lying there in the road, looking like it was dead, but it wasn't. And that's what got Derek and the others."

It was a nightmare scenario . . . but the only one that fit the nightmare they were currently in.

"Emily, no," Hotch shook his head slowly, "no, it was _dead_. You saw that brain matter hit the ground."

He just wasn't ready yet to accept the word that was pressing against his cerebral cortex. Which was why he also wasn't quite ready to accept that ANY creature, even whatever those things appeared to be, could continue to be _functional_ with its brains splattered all over the highway!

HOW did they exist?!

But then Emily again cut into thoughts.

"Yeah," Emily's jaw twitched, "I also saw that body _lying_ on the ground. And I'm telling you Hotch," her voice got louder and tighter, "he wasn't dead. Or," she flapped her arm, "maybe it was dead all along. If they really are . . ."

For a second Emily almost said the word that they weren't saying. It was right there on the tip of her tongue . . . but she bit it away. Because it was something a child would say. One trying to apply a fairytale label to a flesh and blood monster. It didn't matter what they were, or what they called them. They were dangerous, and she and Hotch were being hunted them.

And they'd probably killed all of their friends.

With that last thought came the reality that she could now no longer ignore . . . that JJ and Reid could have been overrun within literally seconds. They wouldn't have been prepared for it. Not when that body had looked dead. That would explain why only one shotgun was grabbed – and why there hadn't even been time to fully load it up. They'd been snatched away.

Snatched away and murdered.

Emily slapped her palm then against her forehead, as a soft, anguished, "fuck," was muttered under her breath.

A slit second later she felt Hotch's fingers curling around her wrist. And even through the layers of their clothing, the effect was comforting. Which she knew, was what he had intended. So for his efforts to keep trying to help her even in the midst of this hell he understood no better than she, Emily reached over and patted his gloved hand with her own.

"I'm okay," she murmured with a light squeeze of his fingers, "I promise."

"It's all right if you're not okay," Hotch responded softly as he stared into the flakes smashing into the windshield, "because I don't know if I am."

She was surprised that he would make such an admission. Because for whatever emotional bonding they'd experienced in the recent past, verbal acknowledgement of such a human 'weakness' (the word he would use) had not been part of it.

Her teeth sunk into her lip as she turned to look directly at him. And for just a second his eyes flickered over and locked onto hers.

And then he looked back through the windshield.

She was just about to say something . . . to agree that maybe she wasn't that okay either . . . when a fresh gust of wind blasted her in the face.

Christ!

She threw her hand up to wipe away the film of water . . . melting snow . . . now covering her skin. Then she heard Hotch from beside her.

"Given that we've barely covered a mile so far, it's going to take a while to get anywhere at this speed, so why don't you try that trick that you and uh," he cleared his throat, "Reid, had been talking about. The vest and the flex cuffs."

God, now he was stammering over Spencer's name the same way he stammered over Derek's. Did that mean his brain was now processing his absence as a death?

Because Hotch wasn't ready for that to be a truth.

And it needed to stop!

"Oh," Emily moved to undo her belt, "right. And actually," she snapped her seat down again so she could more safely crawl from the front, half into the back . . . though given the road conditions, it wasn't safe at all to be unbelted, "those things are right here."

Fortunately they'd pulled all of those materials out earlier, so she just shimmied over and grabbed the box of cuffs, before stretching a little further to snatch up the vest that she'd pushed to the floor when she'd been sorting out the ammo.

And once she had both needed items in hand, she shifted back around, dropped the box into her lap, and hit the lever to snap the seat up into place again. Then she immediately re-clicked her seatbelt.

"All right," she muttered to herself as she began rifling around in the box that they'd been digging into less than an hour ago, "now let's pray this works."

No matter whether it did or not though, it was the only idea they had. So she quickly went about pulling out the bendy pieces of plastic, and linking them up into various lengths of chain. And once she felt there was a sufficient batch of faux rope to work with, she picked up the vest she'd dropped down onto her feet. And with a little bit of cursing, and a few more cuffs to hook around for locking into place, after a couple minutes of work, she did manage to get the vest up, and the wind and snow almost completely blocked.

It wasn't perfect of course . . . it wasn't like their personal Kevlar was designed for use in window treatments . . . but at least it was big enough that once the cuffs were hooked around on the sun visor, the 'oh shit' handle, and the seat belt holder, the vest basically kept in place. Because the one fortunate part of working with Kevlar, was that it _was_ so heavy that the flapping was minimal. Really there was just a small whistling now at the top of the window, where the wind still blew in through a small gap. Also, Emily's face no longer felt like she had it jammed into an ice box.

That was a plus.

"Good job," Hotch murmured as Emily repacked the flex cuff box and tossed it into the back.

"Yeah well," she turned to give him a sad smile, "credit to Reid too."

Hotch was just about to respond, when suddenly Emily smacked his arm.

"OH MY GOD!" she yelled, "over there, up ahead on your left! There's a car spun out off the side of the road!"

It was so covered in snow, that if she hadn't happened to look over at him at that exact moment, Emily knew she might have missed it completely.

They both could have.

Even still, she could sense Hotch's hesitation to actually stop. He did pull his foot back from the accelerator, but she couldn't feel that he'd made any pressure to the brake itself.

"You think it's a trap?" She asked while reaching for the shotgun she had resting down between her legs.

Ordinarily that wouldn't be her first weapon of choice, but it was the only one they had that could take those things heads off with one shot.

Handguns were backup.

"I don't know," Hotch bit down on his lip as the car in question now loomed large in their headlights, "maybe. Or it could belong to those other people that we saw in the woods."

"Oh," Emily let out a soft breath, "right. Them."

The dead ones. Not that she'd forgotten about them. But she'd forgotten to _think_ about them. To think about how they could have gotten out there. And their car spinning off the side of the road in the gathering storm . . . just as theirs had . . . was as plausible an explanation as any other.

Which would mean that there was no help there.

It would be a dead man's car.

Then she heard Hotch murmur, almost to himself, "we should still check it though. Just in case."

Of the many burdens Hotch carried, some were by choice, and some he had no choice in at all. Like his decision to become chief, to be 'in charge' of important things, all the time, that was a burden that he carried by choice. But the sense of responsibility and his protectiveness of others, that was burden he had no choice in at all.

It was just him.

So no matter the circumstance, and these were clearly some of the WORST ones imaginable, it just wasn't in him to drive past a car spun out in a storm, and not check and see if someone in there was hurt.

"Shit," he let out a huff as he shifted to neutral and began to tap the brakes, "okay, uh, you get in the back again. When I stop, we open both doors, but you cover me from back there, I'll run over and check it out."

"Um, Hotch," Emily gently reminded him, "you do know that it would be more logical if I jumped out, right? Because if we need to leave fast, we'll need to have somebody with a foot already on the gas pedal."

Though she knew he was just distracted with his fears of losing her out here too, it made no sense for him to be the one to get out.

None at all.

"Uh, yeah," Hotch winced slightly as they came to a slow stop a few yards south of the car in question . . . he was not thinking clearly at all, "that's a good point." He reached over to shift them into park, before his eyes snapped up to hers. "But I'm still not sending you out there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "I'll climb over and get out the back," he smacked his hand down on the steering wheel, "you climb over here and get in the driver's seat. Once we're lined up, I'll go."

Though Emily knew that both of them were aware that she could handle the vehicle check herself, she also knew this was not the real point of their discussion. The unknown status of JJ and Spencer, and Derek's body lying abandoned on the side of the road, those were the _real_ points of the discussion. But if their positions were reversed, if she were the one in charge, with half of her team now dead or missing, then she'd very likely be behaving the same way that he was.

Totally irrationally.

So she just nodded an, "okay," and let it go.

And with that, Hotch grabbed his shotgun in one hand and jammed his flashlight under his other arm. Then he quickly climbed over and into the second row.

Once he was out of the way, Emily immediately shifted across the console to drop into the driver's seat.

Then she reached back to snatch her own shotgun from the other side of the SUV.

"You ready?" she called softly over her shoulder, and she heard Hotch respond in the same tone.

"Yeah, and let's manually do the locks. I don't want the other doors to be vulnerable with all of our attention on only this side of the vehicle. And I'm just going to quickly check inside the car, if there's anybody there, I'll signal. If not, I'll just run straight back. I want this whole thing done in twenty seconds, tops."

As it stood, Hotch wasn't sure if he was praying to find an unconscious traveler slumped over the steering wheel, or if it would be better if this was a car that _had_ belonged to one of the victims in the woods. Ordinarily of course he would prefer to find life than death, but the thought of having to take in a stranger . . . after all of the strangers they'd met that night who had tried to kill them . . . really held no appeal.

None at all.

So yeah . . . his thumb and forefinger moved to pinch the door lock . . . under the circumstances, a completely abandoned vehicle would definitely be the lesser of all evils.

And hearing Emily murmur a, "got it," Hotch flung open the back door.

His feet were hitting the ground just as he saw Emily's door snapped back. And then with his shotgun up and a combination of their headlights, and Emily's flashlight guiding him . . . he'd decided to shove his Mag light into his vest to keep both his hands free . . . the whole area was bathed in a bright swirling light. It was more than enough to see by. So he cautiously scuttled first around the left side of what he could identify now was a grey, four door sedan.

He let out a sigh of relief.

Nothing there but a layer of pristine, undisturbed, snow . . . though one which was unfortunately covering over both the front and rear windows of the car. Even the side windows were half coated in a layer of frost. It wasn't completely blocking the view of the inside of the vehicle, but it was definitely obscuring it.

So he started to back up, tipping his head to see if there was anything visible through the front passenger side window.

Then suddenly he froze.

There was a figure there. Not slumped though. The head was turned in his direction. Whoever it was . . . that person was looking back at him.

Ah . . . he swallowed . . . shit.

Feeling his heart once more began to pound in his chest, with his right hand Hotch flashed Emily a signal behind his back. Almost immediately, he could hear the distinct sound of her shotgun being cocked. And feeling an ever so slight loosening of the tension in his stomach . . . that woman always had his back . . . he shifted three inches to the right, so that he'd be completely out of her line of fire.

Basically he wanted her to be able to aim dead center on at anything that might come flying through that window. And he had no doubt whatsoever, that whatever the hell those things were hunting them, that they'd have no difficulty at ALL, smashing through tempered glass.

And likely they'd be doing it head first.

Still though, he was hoping against hope that whoever was in that car, was one hundred percent human, and maybe . . . God forgive him . . . completely incapacitated. A broken leg, a couple of broken arms.

Any broken limbs would do.

But for now he needed to cowboy up. So with Emily, and the relative safety of the SUV, a solid twelve paces back . . . which felt like a mile at the moment . . . Hotch took a breath, and clenched his jaw.

Time to do something stupid.

"FBI!" He shouted through the glass, "STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE WITH BOTH OF YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!"

His voice came out in the usual loud and authoritative tone he wanted it to, but still he mentally flinched at the sound. Because he had no desire to once more draw attention from anything in the woods. But he was praying that the howl of the wind would prevent it from carrying beyond their small patch of land they were on at that moment. And unfortunately, the lack of immediate movement from the person in the vehicle, indicated that he was probably going to have to yell again. Or else go over there and just yank open the damn door.

Neither of which sounded like particularly 'safe,' options.

But just as he went to open his mouth, through the frost on the window, he saw the person in the car turning the other way.

And then the door started to open.

Feeling another ratcheting up of his tension level . . . and his index finger now hovering over the trigger of the shotgun . . . Hotch himself, with his heart pounding in his throat, waited to see what was about to emerge from the vehicle. Because somebody _was_ coming out of the door that had just opened. The hands were already locked high above the head even as the body was still unfurling from the driver's seat.

And unfortunately the person's face was still partially turned away.

Though Hotch did think it was a good sign that at least there were a hat and gloves clearly visible in the headlights. Because the others, those _things_ , none of them had been wearing anything more than a suit jacket. And the last two, the ones that Emily had decapitated, they hadn't even had on that much. Just a shirt and pants. So seeing this winter gear was probably a good sign. He let out a faint breath.

The person was probably a person.

Once, yesterday, he would've believed that was the most ridiculous sentence he could have constructed. Today it was simply a relief. And as this person fully emerged from the car, and began to turn around, Hotch continued on with his attempts to keep control of the situation.

"Now state your . . ."

The rest of his sentence fell away as the person lifted his head and squinted into the snow.

It was SPENCER!

"Reid!" Hotch sputtered in disbelief as the shotgun dropped to his side.

"Where the hell have you BEEN?!"

* * *

 _A/N 2: Finally! One of them turned up! And I'd really forgotten how short these chapters were back then. I think I have one or two more already written for repost, then we'll be back into the wild, snowy white, yonder._

 _Thanks for sticking with me everybody!_


	7. No Peace For The Damned

**Author's Note** : Once again, direct continuation.

* * *

 **No Peace For The Damned**

"Hotch?!" Reid yelled as his eyes popped and his arms fell back to his sides, "oh thank God it's you!"

He started running around the front of the car, now rambling in a near panic.

"I got lost in the woods, and I thought I was going to freeze to death but then I stumbled over this caa . . ."

It wasn't possible for Spencer to get the last word out, because Hotch had just yanked him into a bear hug. An action which was so BIZARRELY out of character . . . his boss didn't hug, _EVER(!)_ . . . that it caused him to freeze like a statue, with his arms locked awkwardly down at his sides.

' _What the hell was this?!'_

"Uh, um," he started to stammer against Hotch's shoulder . . . and of course then he was immediately let go.

"Come on," Hotch shifted his grip to grab Reid's sleeve, "we'll talk inside the SUV!" He started frantically tugging him back towards the SUV as he yelled over his shoulder, "it's not safe out here!"

Jesus Christ, he couldn't believe that they'd actually just STUMBLED over him! And he was alive!

That was a God damn MIRACLE!

And Hotch was still so stunned by this turn of events, that when Reid suddenly seemed to spot who was in the driver's seat just ahead, he was able to shake off Hotch's grip, to take off at a run.

Ordinarily Hotch would have had him in a vice grip.

"EMILY! YOU'RE HERE!" Reid was yelling as he sprinted up to the Suburban, trying to hug his friend where she was half hanging out the driver's side door. But again, outdoor reunions weren't safe here either, which Hotch knew that _Emily_ already knew full well . . . even if Reid still didn't get it.

So while she was hurriedly twisting herself away from them and back inside the vehicle, Hotch was grabbing Reid by the scruff of his parka. Then he shoved him through that open back door.

There was no time for gentle guiding.

But of course with Spencer not expecting to get grabbed, he actually stumbled getting himself pulled inside. But Hotch was just a half a step behind him, trying to push him along the floor of the rear cabin.

His youngest agent was basically sprawled out in a pile of gangly limbs.

Once his legs were at least out of the way though, Hotch was able to get his own feet inside. Then he reached over to yank the door shut behind them. That's when Emily hit the locks and spun around and over, twisting down to snag Reid around the neck.

With him still basically lying in a lump, it was an extremely half assed hug.

"I'm so happy to see you Spencer," she murmured tearfully against the back of his shoulder, "but where's JJ?" She pulled away with a sniffle.

"When did you two get separated?"

"Separated?" Reid repeated back in confusion while trying to push himself up into a more dignified position, "what are you . . .?"

And that's when a shot of adrenaline hit him, and he wrenched away from Emily to whip his head around.

OH SHIT! THERE WAS NOBODY ELSE IN THE SUV!

"Where _IS_ JJ?!" he yelled, now spiraling into a terror filled panic as he realized that something ELSE had gone horribly wrong, "and Derek?!" His wild eyes snapped back and forth between Emily in the front and Hotch beside him.

"Where did they GO?!"

The questions were coming out rapid fire, but that was because Spencer could feel that whatever had gone wrong here was somehow his fault. And that would have been bad enough, but then when he saw both Emily and Hotch's faces twist with grief, it felt like he'd been physically punched in the stomach. He gasped.

 _Oh God, what had he DONE?!_

"What happened to them?" He whispered breathlessly as his shaking hand came up and his fingers brushed over his lips, "because when I left they were fine." His voice began to fade when his eyes started to glaze. "They were in the SUV and they were fine."

Hotch's eyebrow shot up.

"What do you mean, when you _left_?" Hotch countered dangerously. "You don't mean that you left them, _deliberately_?"

 _Oh please God, don't make me kill the kid right after I found him!_

"Yeah, I um," Spencer blinked and scrubbed his hand across his forehead, "I left them to go after you two. Not at first," he winced, "at first I stayed like you told us to. But we were so worried, and the minutes kept passing. First five, then ten, and when it was coming up on fifteen, finally I just couldn't stand the waiting anymore so I grabbed one of the shotguns and I tried to go after you because I was sure you were both in trouble and needed help. But," he bit his lip as his voice fell in shame, "then I couldn't find your trail in the snow, and I got lost in the storm and ended up just wandering around until I found the road again. I guess I went the wrong way though because I couldn't find the SUV, and it was so cold, so I just kept walking along the road hoping I'd stumble across it. But then I found that car," he made a disinterested flapping gesture towards the window, "and it was unlocked so I figured that I could hole up in there until the weather got better." Then his head snapped up as a thought occurred to him.

"Oh, my shotgun's still over there."

"Never _MIND_ that now!" Hotch shot back with enough ferocity to make Reid jump. "How the HELL could you leave them alone!?" He continued on in a shaking fury, "Derek was BLIND! And JJ had a concussion! What the fuck were you _THINKING_?! How could you have been so Goddamn STUP . . ."

"Hotch," Emily words cut in softly as her watery gaze fell and her hand pressed against her forehead, "please stop. Please. It won't help."

"Won't help _what_?!" Reid asked tearfully, "you still didn't tell me what HAPPENED?!"

 _Dear God why won't they answer that ONE_ _question?_ _!_

"Derek is dead," Emily whispered, with a catch of Hotch's eyes . . . at the moment she didn't trust his temper to get even that much out without screaming it, "we found him outside on the road behind the SUV. His throat was ripped open." Her faintly watery gaze shifted over to Spencer's horrified one. "You and JJ were missing. We thought you'd both been taken by whoever had killed him, but apparently," she swallowed, "it was just her."

Though Emily stood by her decision to stop Hotch from tearing Reid in two . . . making the kid literally piss his pants wasn't going to fix any of it . . . she couldn't deny that she had her own anger with him on these points. Mostly though she was just utterly BAFFLED at his decision to go! God, how could he have gone off and left them alone knowing what had happened the _LAST_ time that he and JJ had separated out in the middle of nowhere?! Her fist clenched.

 _Had he lost his freaking MIND?!_

"I . . . what?" Spencer whipped his head back and forth in confusion. "No, no, no," he stammered in disbelief, "no that can't true. Derek can't be dead. Derek just needs to go to the hospital for his eye . . ." his voice broke, "he's not dead. He's not."

"He _is_ dead Spencer," Hotch let out on a weary sigh . . . Emily was right, his anger had no place in the now. "He is most definitely, dead. And I know that's a lot to process, and we do need to eventually finish talking about what you did, but Prentiss is right, we have no time right now because we still don't know what happened to JJ." His jaw twitched, "which means that we _still_ need to go for help and come back here again." He jerked his thumb towards the door. "Now I'm going to go get your shotgun, because we've discovered that weapon is VITAL to our survival out here. But when I get back, we're going to leave." His gaze shifted up and over then, locking onto Emily's sad, angry, faintly teary, one in the rearview mirror.

There were just too many emotions for one day.

"Cover me?"

The question was asked softly. But of course it was a rhetorical one anyway. And he could see Emily sniff and nod while wiping one gloved finger under the corner of her eye.

"Yep," Emily cleared her throat, "let's do it."

So momentarily ignoring Spencer's shell shocked, eyes glazed, demeanor . . . they weren't being deliberately cruel with their bluntness because of his fuckup, there was just no time for coddling right then . . . they quickly repeated the process they'd gone through minutes before.

Locks up . . . doors open . . . Hotch running.

This time, knowing the car was empty, he ran straight over and yanked the passenger side door open. Then he was snatching up the Mag light off the dash, and the shotgun off the seat. He was just turning around again, when he heard Emily scream.

"NINE O'CLOCK!"

And his head whipped around to see that those figures were once more coming at him through the snow. And they were coming up fast.

SO Goddamn fast!

OH SHIT!

Even as he took off at a dead run, Emily was already firing.

It was just enough cover for him to make it back to the SUV . . . but not enough to save him completely. Because there were at least three of them that he'd seen, and they moved like the freaking wind! So even though Hotch managed to hurl himself through the open back door, he wasn't able to get it closed before they got there too. And feeling the icy fingers scratching at his calf, he felt a wave of terror wash over him . . . that was just before he was yanked back out the door.

FUCK!

He was clawing at the edge of the carpet, and then the underside of the seats, trying to hold onto anything that would keep him inside, even as he heard Reid screaming, "WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"

And Hotch was about to yell for him to snap the fuck out of it and _HELP HIM(!)_ when he heard Emily, still firing, while simultaneously screeching almost those exact words.

"REID! GRAB HIM FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!"

That seemed to do it. Because then Reid was half on top of him, grabbing him under his arms, as he tried to yank him back into the cab.

But those things were much stronger than even he and Spencer were together. And Reid was only able to pull him back enough to get his shoulders inside, when suddenly there was another hard yank from the other end.

GOD DAMN IT!

As Hotch felt his gloves slipping off the underside of the bench seat, and his cheek sliding along the last few inches of the wet carpeting, his terror unexpectedly gave way completely to another emotion.

Fury.

Because this was a SHIT way to die! Eighteen years with the Bureau, over a decade hunting serial killers, and now he was getting torn apart by some _MAKE BELIEVE_ creatures?! What the hell was _THAT_?!

Who DIED like that?!

And it was just as he released a bellow of pure rage . . . half muffled by the carpeting that his face was scraping along . . . that Hotch heard Emily make a similar sound.

And he could tell from the empty click of the Remington . . . she was out of shells again.

And with his shotgun on his back and Reid's half jammed under the seat from when he'd thrown it through the door, they were screwed.

It was just then that Hoch felt something viciously digging into his leg . . . something besides the dozen or so sharp nails that had snared him . . . and then there was an excruciating pain in his calf. His heart dropped as he bit down a scream of pain.

 _JESUS CHRIST! Were they BITING him?!_

"HOLY SHIT EMILY!" Reid yelled as he tried to give Hotch another hard yank, "THEY'RE **BITING** HIM, THEY'RE BITING HIS LEG AND I CAN'T GET HIM INSIDE!"

And that was Reid confirming Hotch's worst fears . . . he was being SNACKED on! And somehow having that confirmation was enough to shake him out of the momentary paralysis he'd felt. So he started kicking wildly even as he heard Emily yelling at Reid to shoot them.

Just fucking shoot them.

But then Reid was screaming back that if he let even one hand go, that Hotch was going out the door.

Before Hotch himself could weigh in on that point . . . because he was _indeed_ about to go flying out the GOD DAMN DOOR(!) . . . he felt a fresh gust of cold wind hit his cheek, and he realized that another door had just opened.

And that could mean only one thing.

"EMILY!" He let out a muffled screamed, still with his face jammed against the floor, "GET BACK IN HERE!"

Though he knew that she was the only one who could save him, he still didn't want her out there with those creatures.

But per usual for this night, she knew better than he did exactly what needed to be done.

And after he heard two shots from what was definitely a handgun, there was her yell over the storm, "JUST BE READY!" And then there were six more bullets coming rapid fire just behind him.

It was immediately clear that she hit her marks, because the tension on his lower body slackened just enough for him to kick off . . . and Reid yanked him back through the door.

 _THANK YOU CHRIST!_

Hotch was already yanking out his Sig even as he fumbled to roll over onto his back, elbowing Reid out of his way in the process.

There was no time to take a clean shot . . . there was no time for anything really at all . . . all that mattered was not hitting Emily. But out of the corner of his eye, he could see her scrambling back into the front seat, so he fired straight at the creature coming at him through the door.

Its mouth was wide open. There were a whole lot of blackened teeth in there.

And a whole lot of insanity in those pale blue eyes.

And then the bullet was skimming off the top of its skull . . . it scalped him. But it wasn't even close to a kill shot . . . not for these things. Still though, that shot did its job well enough. Because the force of the impact was just enough to throw the thing back and out into the snow. And that gave Hotch the split second he needed to reach over and snag the door handle.

He fired another shot at the hand that tried to snatch it away. And then he got his grip again and he was screaming, "GO, GO, GO!" even as it was slamming shut.

That's when the face of the one he'd just scalped, slammed against the back window. And missing the top half of his skull like that . . . he definitely looked pretty pissed.

Ah shit.

Hotch braced himself against the seat, getting ready to fire again if it came flying through. But just as it started to pull back its arm to punch through the glass, Emily floored it, the tires screeched . . . and there was a thud.

And then they took off in a fishtail . . . one which she immediately straightened out.

"I think I hit one!" Emily yelled, and Hotch scrambled up to lean over her shoulder.

"Yeah," he rasped back as his eyes locked onto the figure visible in the driver's side mirror, "there's one down. There are two still moving that I can see, including the one I shot in the head, but they're just watching us."

For a second, he watched back, just to make sure that none of them decided to run after them.

At their attack speed they might just catch up.

But for whatever reason, for now they were letting them go without any chase. He bit his lip. And that made him more than a little nervous.

It was like they knew something that he didn't.

But no matter . . . he blinked and shook his head . . . they just needed to keep moving. Because when they stopped, that's when they were hit.

Every. Time.

So no more stops for anything. Not unless JJ was right there in front of them. And now that they'd found Reid unscathed, Hotch once more had hope that she was alive out there somewhere too. But God only knew where, so for now he just refocused on their current nightmare.

The one where Emily kept saving his ass.

And with all of her attention currently on just keeping the SUV on the road, he reached back to slip the shotgun off his shoulder.

He slid it down next to her by the console.

"This one's loaded," he rasped out while leaning over to snag the barrel of her Remington, "and I'll take care of this."

"K," she murmured, "thanks," but then a thought seemed to occur to her and her eyes shot up to his in the rearview mirror.

"But you check that bite as soon as you're done," she added anxiously. Then she raised her voice, "Reid, get the kit for him."

Reid's head whipped around . . . he'd been staring out the back window.

"What?" He asked in a daze.

"The _kit_ ," Emily repeated impatiently, "the medical kit. You need to get the disinfectant and some bandages out to clean Hotch's leg."

"Oh," Spencer nodded dumbly, "yeah, okay. Right."

But he didn't actually make any move to find the first aid kit that they'd been using on Derek a couple of hours earlier. Instead he was just staring down at the tiny rips running haphazardly along Hotch's jeans . . . and then the larger bloodied one at the back of his calf.

Given that Hotch himself was scrambling to reload the empty shotgun with the shells he was pulling out of his coat pocket, he didn't seem to be paying his ripped up pants, or Reid, any attention at all.

So finally Reid reached out and put his hand down on top of his boss'.

When Hotch looked up, he dug his gloved fingers into the other man's palm.

"What were those people?" Spencer whispered hoarsely, "what is _happening_ out here?"

Over and over he was rewinding those moments of tug a war that he'd been playing, and he still had NO FUCKNG CLUE(!) what the hell was up with those people that had been trying to tear Hotch in half?! They were so pale and their teeth were so pointy.

And how the HELL had that tall one come flying back up after Hotch took off his SCALP!?

How was that _possible_?!

These were hard questions, and Reid could see from the flickering of emotions going across Hotch's face . . . tension, fear, pain . . . that there was not going to be an answer coming that he'd want to hear.

"You wouldn't believe us if we told you," Hotch responded quietly, "but suffice it to say," he swallowed down the lump in his throat while remembering back to how he'd made his own uneasy peace with the impossible, "they're lightning fast, they're lethal, and they're . . . they're . . ."

For a moment he stammered, trying to think of a way to explain the worst of it, without actually saying the word that couldn't be said.

But then, thank God, Emily saved his ass again.

"Cannibals," she called out softly from the front seat, "they're cannibals."

"Right," Hotch nodded firmly, "yes, correct . . . cannibals."

Or close enough. But either way, it was enough for him to finish what he needed to say.

"So," he continued on while gently moving Reid's hand off of his . . . his anger with him had finally faded, "if they get close, protect your face and neck, and shoot to kill. And forget the Bureau guidelines about aiming for a cluster of center mass shots. You take head shots _only_ ," he added while looking down to start loading shells into the Remington again, "that's an order, because we can't waste ammo. And if they're coming straight at us," he lightly tapped the item in his hand, "this should be your primary weapon."

Looking up to seeing the twists of horror and confusion on Reid's face, Hotch knew that he had more questions he wanted to ask . . . probably many, MANY, more questions . . . but they had no time for any of them. Not now. So before his youngest agent could speak again, Hotch cut him off with a shake of his head.

"I know that you're scared and confused, Spencer," he shot him a hard look, "but lock it down. All of it. You just need to trust us and go with what's happening. We'll talk about everything later after we find JJ and we're all safe. For now," he slapped the last shell into the gun, "just stay sharp, react quickly, and shoot straight at their heads." Then he took a breath and reached out to squeeze Reid's shoulder.

"We'll make it out of this, somehow."

Those last words he added softly, trying to offer what little comfort (lies) that he could. And with that, Hotch gently pushed Reid aside so he could crawl over and get into the front passenger seat.

He dropped the shotgun down between the seat and the door. It was when he turned to grab the belt, that Emily blindly reached over to smack his arm.

"God damn it, Hotch," she shot him a scowl before her eyes shot back to the storm outside the windshield, "you didn't clean up your LEG!"

"Oh," his nose wrinkled even as his gaze dropped down to his torn, slightly bloody, jeans, "right. Shit. Okay uh," he snapped the belt into place while calling back to Reid.

"Spencer, can you get me that disinfectant and bandage. And uh," he looked down at the torn denim, "maybe another pair of socks out of my bag."

This was obviously NOT the time to be yanking off his jeans, but he should probably at least change out the bloodied, gnawed on, sock.

And after Reid stammered out an anxious, "yeah, right one second," and began fumbling around in the back seat, Hotch heard Emily's quiet countermand from across the console.

"Actually Reid, get the extra socks out of my bag."

Then she threw a quick glance over to Hotch.

"For my boots, I wear men's thick, wool knee socks." She looked back to the slippery road, "so if you're not going to change your pants, then that's what you need to be wearing to cover under those tears."

"Oh," Hotch tipped his head, "thanks. And thank you for before. But really," he pulled his leg up to prop his boot on the dashboard, "it's not that bad." He started running his finger along the edge of the flapping material, "the denim must have been hard to chew through, because I think it was really just the uh," he swallowed, "the fangs, that made it down to the skin."

Though the thought of 'fangs' sinking into his skin had actually just shot a chill down his spine. And now he was flashing on Bela Lugosi stalking helpless young women in their bedchambers. Then the monster leaning down and digging his shiny white fangs into their soft flesh. Which was essentially what had just what happened to him.

Without the bedchamber.

Ah Christ . . . he swallowed . . . he couldn't be _infected_ now, could he?

"Emily," he started softly, "you don't think that when it bit me that it could have . . ."

But before he could get the horrible question out, she'd already cut him off.

"No," she shook her head vehemently, "no, absolutely not. They just bit you, not the other way around. And every damn story we've ever read, and movie we've ever seen, always says it has to be the other way around. So we'll assume that's true, because the other things we've seen have been true too. And besides," she bit down on her lip, "you said it was barely a bite if that, so," she shot him a tight, reassuring smile, "I'm not worried about that kind of infection at all."

Though she would not have been above lying to him in that moment . . . he was clearly terrified . . . Emily really did believe what she was saying. Clearly the basic mythology that had been passed along from the centuries old literature, had been filtered down from real events. Yes, that was INSANE . . . but it didn't seem to make it any less true. So no fucking way in hell was Hotch now going to "turn" into a blood sucking, throat ripping, MONSTER just because he had a little nibble on his leg! She scowled.

Yeah, that was a bullshit line of thought right there!

For a second Hotch just stared over at Emily, even though her eyes had shifted back to the road. Then just when he was about to speak again, Reid tapped him on the shoulder.

He jumped.

"Here you go Hotch."

And Hotch turned to see Reid holding out three small items for him to take . . . so he took them.

"Two disinfectant pads and a bandage," Reid continued softly, "just let me know if you need another one." Then he dropped another item onto the console.

"And the socks."

"Thanks Spencer," Hotch murmured as he turned back around. And as Reid pulled away, he added over his shoulder.

"You belt up now, and make sure you keep that shotgun in hand for a couple of minutes." He looked down to start untying his boot. "I'm going to be a bit distracted here."

"Right," Reid fell back onto the bench seat while nodding a sharp affirmation that Hotch couldn't see, "okay. Got it."

Though Spencer wanted VERY badly to ask what it was that Hotch and Emily had been referring to . . . about the infection . . . he was afraid that they wouldn't answer him.

Or more so, even if they did, that the answer wouldn't be one that he'd want to hear.

So for now, as he should have done earlier he just did as he was told, fixing his belt before leaning over to grab his still partially loaded shotgun. Then he reached down to snag his Mag light.

For all that he'd done wrong that night, he didn't want to fuck up again. And he had a feeling that if something happened and they had to stop, that he'd need to be ready to move in an instant.

To that end, as he tucked the flashlight into the gap in his vest, he called out softly to the other two.

"Um," he leaned forward slightly, "are there still extra shells? Because I only had time to grab a handful before I left."

Emily answered.

"Yeah Spencer," she nodded, "we have more. When Hotch is done he'll give you some. We have your bullets too. We actually loaded up all of the spare ammo into our pockets and your bag, and that's down by Hotch's feet."

"Speaking of the bag," Hotch cut in while violently scrubbing the drying blood off his calf with the disinfectant wipe, "we also put food and water in there, so if we have to run, we need to keep it with us."

"Okay," Reid nodded nervously, "got it."

Then his gaze shifted down and over to the pile of his loose belongings tucked in behind the four half- open ready bags.

And seeing Morgan's earphones dangling over the zippered edge of his duffel, Reid quickly looked away. His eyes started to burn.

"I know you said that we'd talk later," his whisper was so soft that he wasn't sure his words would carry to the front, "but I just want you guys to know how truly sorry I am that I left them. But," his voice cracked, "all I could think of was Emily being taken the way I was, and the longer you were gone, the more convinced I was that she'd gotten away from you Hotch. That you hadn't been able to catch up. And I was going crazy picturing that, picturing her tied up somewhere for days, and I just," a tear slipped down his cheek . . . one that he quickly wiped away, "suddenly I just grabbed up the shotgun and I shoved in the shells and I ran."

Now that Reid had started his confession, he couldn't stop until he was done. And as another tear spilled over, he sniffled.

"JJ was yelling at me the whole time. Telling me I was being stupid," a sob started to escape, "and that we needed to stay together, because of what had happened before. But I didn't listen to her! I told her that I'd be right back," he sniffled again, "and that they'd be fine if she just locked the door behind me." He bit down on his lip as he wiped his hand across his face, "but obviously they weren't. And I know that's all my fault."

Then he took a breath before adding softly.

"I'll put in my resignation when we get back."

And though the other two had been quiet while he was speaking, at that Hotch turned around.

"You'll do no such thing," he stated firmly, "yes, you screwed up, but you know screwed up, and you've _more_ than learned your lesson. And you resigning won't serve any purpose at all. You've done a lot of good work, Spencer." Hotch's voice began to thicken, "you've helped to save SO many people over these last few years, and all of that good wasn't washed away by you making one bad call." His dark eyes locked onto Reid's watery ones.

"So you'll take a three day unpaid suspension and that's it. That'll be the end of it, okay?"

Three days was officially going to be perceived as 'light' punishment for an action that resulted in the death of a fellow agent. But it was all that he deserved. His intentions were just even if his actions were not. And Hotch would never have even brought up the idea of any official punishment at all, if not for Reid threatening to resign. That was ridiculous.

And the whole idea of it had to be shut down.

And as he looked back at his youngest agent wiping the tears from his face, Hotch felt a pang of true empathy for him.

So he added one more thing.

He added a truth . . . or at least a point that he wanted to be true. Either way, it would make Reid feel better.

That was all that mattered.

"You couldn't have saved them even if you'd been there," Hotch whispered. "They were ambushed, so there was no possibility of winning that fight. So don't feel that Derek's death is on your hands, because it's not. It's not your fault. Just remember the lesson for next time."

And tragically, there would be a next time.

There always was.

And as he saw Reid nodding as he sniffled once more, Hotch figured that was as much as he could do for him.

So he turned back to finish tying his boot.

As he lean over to pick up the edges of his lace, he felt Emily's gloved fingers sliding around his forearm.

When his eyes shot over to hers, he saw the tears on her face.

Then she nodded and mouthed, ' _good job_ ,' just before she squeezed his wrist.

Then she let go.

For a moment Hotch just looked over at her, one handedly wiping the tears from her face. Then he blinked and looked back down to his untied boot.

Right, things to do.

And after he got the boot tied, he gathered up all of the medical wrapping bits off his lap, and shoved them into the small trash in the center of the console. Then he reached down to snag the backpack. Once he had it unzipped, he pulled out a half dozen shotgun shells for Reid. Then he reached in again to take out twice that number of bullets for his .38.

After he'd passed those into the backseat, he leaned over to pull Emily's Sig out of her holster.

She was down eight rounds.

So he put a fresh clip in the revolver, and the half empty one into her jacket pocket.

It was as he was pulling his hand back, that his eyes widened in alarm.

"There's a tear in your parka." He felt a jolt of panic as his gaze snapped up to her face, "a big chunk of its missing out of the side. When did that happen? Did you get bitten too?!"

It was very possible that she could have been when she jumped out to help him. There were three of those things out there. Only one was completely focused on him the whole time. So at least one of the other two would have gone right for her as soon as the front door opened. There was actually no way that they wouldn't have.

Christ, how the hell had he not thought of that BEFORE?!

But as he stared anxiously over at Emily's pretty face, in the dashboard lights he felt a surge of relief when he saw that she was shaking her head.

"It's _just_ a rip, Hotch," Emily stated firmly, "I promise. When I first jumped out one of them grabbed me and I shot him twice point blank in the chest, but he still had a handful of my jacket when he fell back. And then he was on the ground and I shot the one holding you and the third one was grabbing for my arm, but before he got his claws in, I kicked him and jumped back inside." She shot him a quick look, "so stop freaking out. I wasn't bitten." Her eyes shot back out to the road, "they didn't even come close."

Which was exactly why she hadn't mentioned the ripped jacket earlier. She knew that Hotch would have been in a panic over a non-event.

And there were enough REAL things to panic about already!

Still though, she sensed that he was about to say something else on this point, so she redirected their collective focus by calling out to Reid instead.

"Spencer, please get me the water that should be sticking out of my bag. The already opened one."

A second later, as Reid started to pass up the bottle, she saw Hotch intercepting it. And she was just about to ask what he was doing, when she saw him taking the cap off.

Reid had forgotten.

"Thanks," she murmured when he passed it over. But he just shrugged a shoulder while turning to ask Reid to open one of the protein bars and tear into thirds.

As he turned back around, he added . . . almost like an afterthought . . . that he could use some of the Tylenol out of the med kit too.

Then he seemed to sense her question coming, because he directed his next words directly to her.

"I'm just a little sore from being the rope in a human tug of war."

Her eyes crinkled slightly.

"Okay," she whispered back, "just checking." And then she took a swig of water before passing the bottle back to him. In return he passed her one of the two pieces of protein bar that Reid had just handed over.

It was peanut butter.

So of course she needed another drink after that. But before she'd even asked, Hotch was passing her back the bottle.

It was strange sometimes how their brains worked.

In sync.

But that time she only took a tiny sip. The last thing she wanted to do in the situation that they were currently in, was to work out the logistics of lady peeing. Fortunately the almost constant adrenaline that had been surging through her body, was pushing down such basic biological needs. But still, eventually her little girl bladder was going to betray her. And then she was going to be pulling over and trading seats with Hotch so that she could get into the way back and squat down over an empty shotgun shell box.

That was a moment she was hoping to put off for as long as possible.

So for now she just focused all of her attention away from her prospective bladder issues, and onto the slippery road. Just like when Hotch was driving, it was difficult really to get any speed.

At least without killing them.

But at their current, "breakneck," twenty-six miles per hour, it sort of felt like they were flying through the whipping snow.

Kind of like a bat.

 _No . . . she scowled . . . no, no, no, no, NO! Stupid Emily. That's just REALLY, really asinine! They're NOT going to turn into bats and come FLAPPING after us in the storm!_

Not a chance in hell.

Still though, asinine thought though it may have been, it didn't stop her from involuntarily ducking down to look up out the top of the windshield.

But then she heard from across the console.

"What is it?"

And she felt her cheeks burning.

"Nothing," she whipped her head back and forth, "just thought the snow might be, uh, letting up."

A bold face lie, but one that Hotch should believe without question. Not like if she'd said, "oh just looking to see if _Dracula_ was about to flap HIS way through our windshield!"

Even after EVERYTHING that they'd seen, that would have been a freaking psych exam response! And it was at least clear that he thought her answer was totally valid. Because he just responded back, "no unfortunately, I don't think we're coming out of the storm yet."

And then they were both quiet again.

Her gaze flickered down and up, before she murmured, "gas is starting to worry me. We're got maybe a quarter of a tank left."

"Yeah," Hotch's brow creased as he leaned over to read the gauges, "I was afraid of that. Though," he shifted back to his seat, "we are at least making some distance. It's about seven miles now since we started up again, right?"

"Yeah," Emily nodded, "that's about what I calculated too." Then she added on a sigh, "if only we knew how much farther we'll have to go though, I might be a little more excited about that number."

"Well . . ."

Hotch was just about to respond with some random, 'rah, rah,' BS response, when suddenly he saw something just ahead.

"Stop! Now!" He hissed while leaning over to grab Emily's arm, "as quickly as you can without spinning out."

Unfortunately it was clear from the terrified look that she shot him back across the front seat, that she had not yet seen what he'd seen.

"What is it?!" She asked worriedly while gently tapping the brakes, "what do you . . . see?"

Her words trailed off just as her eyes widened.

"Oh my God. Is that what it looks like?"

"Yeah," Hotch nodded excitedly as he leaned forward to see better through the whipping snow . . . he wiped his hand across the condensation on the glass, "it most definitely is."

It was a sign.

 _Jerusalem's Lot. Est. 1765_

 _Pop. 1003._

Finally . . . Hotch shot Emily a small, though elated, grin . . . civilization!

* * *

 _A/N 2: So yes, obviously, NOT the place you want to go for help. Kind of like, "yes, Gomorrah!" And according to Wiki, that is the year they were incorporated. Also obviously that is Mr. King's town, not mine :)_

 _Though we still have a couple of twists left, we are hitting the top of the hill so we can begin winding towards the end here. And I already wrote the VERY end, so yay on that point. I just have to fill in the missing bits between here and there, so maybe (rough estimate) four to six chapters to go. Depends how much 'live' versus narrative. Narrative obviously goes faster, but when you're writing something with an element of suspense to it, experiencing the events 'live' with the characters, clearly helps :)_

 _Emily's thoughts on peeing! Once I watched this TERRIBLE, low budget, poorly acted, horror movie (because I love them dearly) and these teenagers were lost in the woods for two and a quarter days and only one of them needed to pee (of course she was murdered for it) and the whole time, the ONLY thing these kids consumed for solids or liquids was a shot each from a flask of purloined whiskey. This was after like a seven hour hike in the sun where again, nobody brought even a single a bottle of Dasani. I guess that would have put them over their minimal budget. But I digress. The point was, I always find it extremely annoying, to the point that it distracts me from the story, when people are lost for lengthy periods of time and at no point is there any acknowledgement of basic biological urges like thirst or urination. Like just because you're getting chased by vampires in the middle of a snowstorm, doesn't mean you might not have polished off a grande mocha cappuccino when you landed at the airport. Fight or flight adrenaline only pushes off those urges for so long, and then you have to cowgirl up, and take a squat. And I figure at this point they've already been on the road like five hours, with no travel end in sight, so it's wise for Emily to start planning for the inevitable. Which is also why I like keeping her in total badass mode here. She can cry because she's sad, and worry about having to pee down her leg in the back of the SUV, while still jumping into the fray like a one woman A Team so she can save Hotch from becoming a Lunchable. And I AM holding steady on the old school mythology rules. I even looked them up again just to confirm, back in the day, "infection" was with the cross transfer of blood. Not just being bitten. Which I guess is your big dividing line between vampires and "walkers." And yes, I do still have a very specific idea for a CM crossover with Walking Dead, but let's not even think about that!_

 _And I kind of hated to have to give Reid that suspension, just because he felt so awful, and he meant well, but, he still fucked up. And any report that only says he got a 'stern warning' for an action that contributed to the abduction of one fellow agent, and the death of another, one who was already incapacitated and unable to defend himself, would look RIDICULOUS. As I've stated many times before, I try to go for 'real, fake life.' Even (or especially) in stories about vampires :)_

 _Lastly, once again, thanks to you guys sticking with this one. This was never one of my most popular stories and coming back to it again, it is still very much an 'exclusive reading club.' :) And this one was the last of the chapters that had been posted on the original version. Anything that goes up after this (and the muses are still here) would be NEW CONTENT! I am as hopeful as you guys are, that I really can get it up, and get this wrapped, because I skim over my other stories and I see all of their endings in my head and I would just love to get those back up, and wrapped as well. But like I said from my first note here on the repost, one thing at a time, and we keep all expectations low. But even if we get stuck again, thank you all for coming back to read my stuff again. I really do appreciate it._


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